


After the Heroes

by Pen Dumonium (megyal)



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Superheroes, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-06
Updated: 2010-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-13 02:06:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/Pen%20Dumonium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the heroes come... the clean-up crew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Novel Big Bang](http://community.livejournal.com/novel_bigbang/). Betaed by txilar@LJ, and all the artwork was made by the incredible boxedfish@LJ. The original art post is [here](http://boxedfish.livejournal.com/1196.html).
> 
> This whole idea came from a conversation I had with txilar, about who cleans up after action/superheroes. I wondered, "Who FIXES all these things?"; she said: _"You know, when someone is pushed off a building and a car gets hit, like maybe that driver had an important interview first thing the next day? how do you call in and ask to reschedule for that? or 'superman threw my house out to sea so i'm going to be a little late this morning...' Who cleans up after these guys?_ That was basically where this was born. Most of the story, though, is based on the main characters growing up.
> 
> Thanks also to those who listened to me waffling about the whole writing, and thanks to okubyo_kitsune@LJ for helping me name Smith. boxedfish's artwork is placed in the body of the fic itself; they're incredible, and really inspiring!

  


_Those who can, save the world..._   


## i. Charlie Parks

Charlie waited at the end of Pine Avenue, standing astride his battered BMX and jittering along to the music in his head. It was some commercial he had heard on TV this morning, and it was so catchy, he started humming it breathlessly as he waited for Smith to show up.  
   
He glanced up at the blinding blue of the summer sky and grinned at the endless curve of it. Then, he heard the spinning of wheels behind him and turned around. His grin faded, because it wasn't Smith at all, but Marcus Baker and Jimmy Ferguson, rolling up on their skateboards behind him. Their grins were far more feral in the sunshine than when they were shoving Charlie around Granville Middle School.  
   
"Chalkie Parks!" Marcus hollered out; Charlie made to hop on his bike and pedal away as fast as he could, but he felt someone's hand (probably Jimmy) grab him by the collar and haul him off. His bicycle fell one way and Charlie fell the other way, the skin his wrists and arms scraped badly because he was trying to brace against his fall.  
   
It was the  _summer,_  Charlie thought morosely as Marcus and Jimmy cackled from somewhere above. He thought he deserved a break from all this crap, but apparently his luck didn't hold out. In addition to being scrawny for his age, and extremely short-sighted, he was what his mother called  _uncommonly pale._ As a matter of fact, he had on a thick layer of sunblock on right now, the bottle stuffed in the fanny-pack his mother made him wear. She knew for sure he was going to get back home as red as a lobster if he didn't keep it on.  
   
It was this uncommon paleness that made Charlie Parks a great target for guys like Marcus and Jimmy, with their yodeling of 'Chalkie Parks!' He tried to stand up, but one of them pushed him down again and he thumped on his ass painfully. Resigned, Charlie stayed down. He pushed at the nose-bridge of his thick glasses and sighed noiselessly.

"Chalkie Parks!" Marcus yelled again and then laughed; it sounded like the caw of a crow. "What are you doing out? Your mom let you out the dungeons today?"  
   
Jimmy said, "Maybe he'll burn like a.... like a..."  
   
"Like a fire?" Charlie piped up helpfully, and prepared to launch himself to one side, in case they got it in their heads to kick. "Like a torch?"  
   
Jimmy scowled. He wasn't very smart, but that was just Charlie's opinion.  
   
"Maybe he'll burn," Jimmy mumbled and left his attempts at witticism right there.  
   
"You got any cash on you, Chalkie Parks?" Marcus said, taking a single step towards him and cracking the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of the other. He always said 'Chalkie Parks', as if he didn't want to forget the name. They were just kids now, but Charlie would bet that in ten, fifteen years, he'd be parking his car on Main Street somewhere and Marcus would walk up and say, "Chalkie Parks! Give me your keys."  
   
"No, I don't," Charlie said now, rubbing at his bruised wrists. "I don't have any."  
   
"That's a lie." Jimmy narrowed his eyes. "Your mom always gives you money, so cough it up."  
   
"I  _told_  you, I don't have--"  
   
"Jeez louise, grab his arm, Jimmy," Marcus said and they both lunged for him. Charlie put up his hands to ward them off.  
   
"Leave him alone," someone said behind them. The two hulking boys paused in their rush and peered over their shoulders. Charlie ducked down, peeking between their thick legs to see a pair of scabby knees half-covered by a pair of red shorts. A small, shaggy dog, still barely a puppy, sat next to the feet attached to these knees. The dog's tail thumped against the tall grass that thrived on the edge of the sidewalk.  
   
"Go jump off a cliff," Marcus snarled at Charlie's help. "Shephard, you got no business here, anyway."  
   
"Leave him alone," Smith Shephard insisted, and Charlie leaned to one side so he could see his friend properly. Smith was standing with his arms folded across his skinny chest, warm skin contrasted against the yellow if his sleeveless t-shirt. His mass of black curls hung around his face and nearly obscured the watchful brown of his eyes.  
   
"What you gonna do, set that dog on us?" Jimmy mocked and the two boys brayed laughter. Smith glanced down at Turbo, who looked back up at him as if to say,  _I know. They're morons._

 _Come on,_  Charlie thought with a species of agonized urgency, shifting to sit up properly.  _Do your cool stuff, Smith! You can do that thing that'll make them!_  
   
Smith now turned his calm gaze on Charlie; Charlie was always struck by how  _old_  Smith's face looked sometimes, even though he'd heard his big sister say that if Smith was a few years older, she'd definitely give him another look or two, but he was four years too young for her. At sixteen, Tiffany was the pinnacle of maturity, apparently; Charlie thought his sister was kind of gross. Charlie had thought about it, and had concluded that Smith had that same expression Charlie's grandfather had. Whenever he, Tiffany and Bradley were dragged out to the Craig Bryerton Home for the Elderly, his dad's father always possessed that same mixture of amused wear, as if he'd seen it all before and he still found it funny, kind of.  
   
Smith was the same age as Charlie; how he managed to have such an old expression was something that Charlie found interesting, the way he found caterpillars interesting, or pondered on how Pong worked. Maybe it was because Smith's dad had been in the army, and they travelled all over the place; Smith had been places that Charlie only read about in the set of encyclopaedia that his mother kept on a shelf in the living room, even though Smith said he didn't really remember most of them. He lived in Japan last year, though.  
   
Charlie had been simultaneously jealous and ecstatic to hear that.  
   
He was just as ecstatic to hear Marcus now say, "Come on, Jimbo. Let's leave these two dickweeds."  
   
"Yeah," Jimmy said most eloquently, shooting venemous glares in Smith's direction as they kicked up their skateboards and hopped on, rolling off towards the other end of the road in the direction of the cornerstore. They'd probably find some other kid and shake them down for money to buy Popsicles.   
   
"You okay?" Smith watched Charlie carefully as he got up, brushing at the seat of his shorts and grimacing at the pain that bit into his skin. He raised his hands to inspect the raw flesh, looking up in surprise when Smith walked over and took him by the wrists, very gently. On the skin of his palms, Smith had the rough callouses earned by a pitcher. His head was lowered as he inspected Charlie's injuries; Charlie stared at his mass of black curls and noted, with not a little surprise, that there was a single white strand in the middle of his head. Funny how he'd never seen that before; Smith had been sitting right next to him for the past semester, and he'd never noticed that.  
   
"We should put something on this," Smith finally declared, releasing Charlie's hands. He tilted his head in quick invitation and turned on his heel, broken-down sandals barely hanging on to his dusty feet by some weary-looking straps. Turbo trotted sedately along beside Smith, and Charlie flittered in front of them both like a butterfly on medication, wobbling on his bicycle. He raced past the quiet houses and turned onto the long driveway that led to the garage of Smith's house. It was tucked so far back from the road, and obscured by so many species of plant-life, that only the merest suggestion of white siding and slate-grey roof was visible between the hanging leaves of the surrounding trees.  
   
Charlie flung down his old bike to the side of the driveway, hoping that it wasn't in Dr. Shephard's way if he came home for lunch, pounded up the three wide steps. He waited for Smith on the narrow porch, bouncing from foot to foot while the scraped skin on his wrists throbbed. They were hurting a bit more, and he was biting his lip as Smith sedately pulled out his key from his shorts-pocket and keyed open the door. Turbo clattered in before them, heading for his bowl in the kitchen.  
   
"Smith? Back already?" Smith's mom called out, coming up from the basement, her arms full of laundry. She smiled when she saw Charlie, who grinned back. Charlie liked Mrs. Shephard, a lot. "Hello, Charles," she said in her smooth, English accent, eyes dark like Smith's.   
   
"Hi!" Charlie piped in reply. He never got over the fact she called him Charles. Even his own parents didn't call him that.  
   
"Charlie fell," Smith said, and he seemed to go tense as his mother gave him a very long look. "I didn't do it," he said, a plaintive note creeping into his voice. His mother just kept staring at him, her face hard. She looked as if she was turning into a statue.  
   
Charlie looked from one of them to the other and then said, "Yeah, Mrs. Shephard. It was some other kids that pushed me down, Smith made them stop. Honest."  
   
Mrs. Shephard's gaze swung to Charlie and her eyes narrowed at him. Charlie felt a bit funny, like... maybe like how a light electrical shock would course through his body, but minus the pain. He actually looked around himself to see if some wire had stuck him in the arm, but there was nothing.  
   
"Let's go put something on it," Smith said as he walked up the staircase. "Come on, Charlie."  
   
Charlie looked back once over his shoulder, surprised to see Mrs. Shephard still watching them as they went up.  
   
Smith unlocked a closet just at the top of the staircase and considered the neatly arranged medication on the shelves. "Dad doesn't want us to keep these things in the bathroom," he explained as he went on his tip-toes and plucked out a slender white box. "He says they lose their efficacy when they're so exposed to all that warmth or whatever."  
   
Charlie had no idea what  _efficacy_  meant, and he said so.  
   
"The workingness of something," Smith explained as they walked towards his room at the end of the corridor. Charlie completely understood; he always appreciated how Smith explained stuff so that Charlie could get it. Charlie was very good at math and sciences, but Smith liked to read, and he was good at talking.  
   
Before they got to Smith's door, they had to pass another; it was open barely a crack, the sliver of darkness almost ominous despite its width. The day was bright and cheerful, yet this room had the blinds tightly drawn or probably had heavy curtains hung over the windows to be so dark.  
   
That was Shanice's room. She was Smith's older sister, maybe a little older than Tiffany, but Charlie had never seen her before. Not at school, not out bickering with Smith as Charlie bickered with Tiffany... never.  
   
Charlie had an idea why, and it had to do with Smith... and what Smith was capable of.  
   
He watched as Smith reached out with his free hand and gripped the round, bronze doorknob, pulling the door shut. The lock clicked into place, but Charlie swore that he heard another small sound from behind the door, like a low growl. Smith paused very briefly, and then continued to walk. His shoulders were set in a line so straight Charlie could have balanced a ruler atop them.  
   
Smith pushed his own door open and walked over to his messy bed, sitting down and gazing at Charlie expectantly. Charlie dragged his feet as he went close, holding out his hands wrists-up, as if he was getting cuffed for his last walk to the gallows.  
   
"Come on." Smith grinned, a rarity for his usually sombre expression. "It's not gonna burn."  
   
"It will!" Charlie whined. "Those things  _always_  burn!"  
   
"Not this one," Smith said; he actually appeared as if he was just about to start chuckling, but he composed himself at Charlie's pout. "Trust me, okay? I've used this before, it doesn't burn much. Okay?"  
   
"Okay." Charlie held his hands a little higher and then turned his head away. Smith rubbed on a dollop of the cream on Charlie's left wrist, fingers moving  very gently; the cream didn't burn, but Charlie's skin was scratched raw, and he still winced.  
   
"Still hurts," Charlie grumbled. "Can't you do that thing? I mean, if you can make it hurt, you can take the pain away, right?"  
   
The stillness dropped around them the way a curtain would fall on the last act of a play. Smith stared at the damaged skin he was looking after, and then carefully pulled his hands away. He looked at Charlie's t-shirt, which currently around the level of his face.  
   
He said, "What did you say?"  
   
"That thing." Charlie touched his own wrists in a gingery manner and then stared down at his friend, putting his arms around himself. "That thing, Smith--"  
   
"I don't know what you're talking about," Smith said and his gaze flickered up at Charlie, who shrank away a little at the burning anger in it. Smith stood up and Charlie backed away. "I don't know what you're talking about," he repeated, a little louder this time as if he could beat this into Charlie's head by the force of his voice.  
   
"But I saw, with Turbo--"  
   
"Get out of my house," Smith said, his hands now clenched at his sides. Charlie wanted to cry; even though Smith had been attending their school since last year September, Charlie had only really succeeded in talking to him in January. Now it was only a few days into summer and he'd managed to make Smith feel really bad, bad enough to have a  bright sheen in his eyes that spoke of impending tears.  
   
"Smith--"  
   
"Go away!" Smith cried out, lunging forward and grabbing Charlie by his narrow shoulders. He spun the smaller boy around and shoved him out the door, propelling him down the corridor. "Just go away, Charlie!"  
   
"I--Smith, I--"  
   
Smith left him at the top of the staircase and ran back to his room, slamming the door so hard that the vibrations seemed to run through the whole house. Charlie stood there for a moment, his bottom lip trembling. Great; Smith hated him now. He was back to his old number of friends, which was a grand total of  _zero._  
   
"Charles?"

Charlie looked down into the concerned expression on Mrs. Shephard's face. Turbo was beside her, looking up curiously as well. Charlie swallowed hard, fighting back the tears.

"What's wrong?" she said, and climbed up towards him, holding out her arms. Charlie ran down into them, pressing his face into her stomach when they met. Mrs. Shephard was really tall and thin, but her arms were warm around him.  
   
"Shhh," she said, running a hand through Charlie's fine, fair hair, which was always sticking out all around his head like a crazy halo. "Did he hurt you?"  
   
Charlie pulled back and drew the back of his hand across his nostrils, wiping away the snotty mess. "No, Smith would never do that to me. Never ever, Mrs. Shephard." He looked up into her face earnestly.  
   
Mrs. Shephard just regarded him for a long moment before saying, "How do you know that, Charles?"  
   
It was one of those adult questions, those that sounded like one thing but meant another. Charlie answered as truthfully as he could, "He hasn't as yet. He'd never,  _never ever--_ "  
   
"Alright, Charles, I get it," she cut in, sounding amused. She released him, and then tucked his hair behind his ears. When his mother did that, Charlie always felt she was doing it because she felt she had to. When Mrs. Shephard did it, he got the feeling that she did it because she wanted him to feel better.... and he did.  
   
Bending down so she could cup his face and look directly in his eyes, she said, "I'll talk to him for you. Go home and get some rest. He'll visit with you tomorrow."  
   
Feeling suddenly very languid, Charlie murmured, "'kay, Mrs. Shep... Shep _heeerrd,_ " slurring over the name. He could go home and lie down, that was a  _great_  idea; he was feeling really sleepy all of a sudden. He could make it home, no problem dude, he thought, but what a waste of the day! In any case, the summer vacations had just begun; he had all those weeks to run rampage with Smith, and he'd make sure he'd never make Smith feel bad again.  
   
Mrs. Shephard straightened and gazed up the stairs with a thoughtful look in her eyes. Charlie reached up and tugged the short sleeve of her dress.  
   
"Miz Shephard, Smith is really really nice," he told her and then stumbled down the staircase. He crouched down to pet Turbo, who endured his clumsiness and then let himself out. He couldn't be bothered with getting on his bike, he just wheeled it all the way home. He tucked it inside the dilapidated shed that housed the lawnmower as well and went inside his house.  
   
It was empty; his sister and brother were out with friends, probably at the mall, and his parents were at work. That was fine. He went up to the room he had all to himself when Bradley was at college, took off his sneakers and curled into his bed.  
   
A few hours later, his brother tried to wake him. "Hey, dweeb, Mom said you should come down for dinner."  
   
"Dinner?" Charlie moved his head on his pillow, feeling the soft cotton against his cheek. "Okay."  
   
His mother came up after dinner. "Charlie, what's wrong with you?" He felt her hands on his forehead, damp against his skin, but he just wanted some  _sleep._  "You don't have a fever. Larry, he doesn't have a fever."  
   
"Let the kid sleep," his father's gruff voice returned. "He was probably all over the place today."  
   
"No, Daddy," Charlie said dreamily, his eyes closed; the lamp beside the bed was on, though, he could see the red wash of light through his eyelids. "I wasn't."

"Did you drink something, Charlie?" His mother's voice was very loud and Charlie just wanted to bury himself under his sheets. "Did you? Or, or take something?"  
   
"No. Just wanna sleep."  
   
Another hand touched his forehead; Charlie smelled the grease and oil his father worked with, the hot metal and leather of the cars he worked on.  
   
"Leave him alone," his father finally said, although he sounded a bit doubtful. "If he's still like this tomorrow, we'll carry him to the doctor."  
   
The next morning, however, Charlie was up before everyone else, feeling as if there were rainbows flowing under his skin instead of blood. He was eating a massive bowl of cereal, and pondering if he'd eat a piece of the lasagne his mother had apparently made last night, when Tiffany came into the kitchen and stared at him.  
   
"You're alive?" she said, going over to the fridge and took out the milk. As she poured herself a glass, she asked, "What happened to you? Mom was going crazy."  
   
"I just wanted some sleep, that's all." Charlie lifted the bow and put the rim of it to his lips, slurping up the last of his own milk.  
   
"Whatever," Tiffany said and took her glass out into the family room. He heard the television switch on and the low murmur of the morning news-hour. The words  _meteor-shower_  and  _genetic mutations_  filtered out to him before Tiffany switched the channel to a music station.   
   
Charlie went for the lasagne, hacking out a nice big piece right into the same bowl he had used for his cereal. He dug into it, cold, and savoured the tang of the cheese. The meteor-shower was something that had been happening for  _ages_ now... and every time another wave passed, thankfully small chunks that burned up in the Earth's atmosphere, a few people ended up with strange abilities.  
   
Like Smith... and Charlie had seen him use these abilities, only once. It had been in November, maybe late December, and Charlie had been walking home from school, warmly protected against the bite in the wind with his brother's old parka. Actually, he had been trailing Smith, but since they lived in the same direction from school, just two streets apart, he had a perfectly valid reason for trotting after the new kid in school.  
   
He had stopped short in surprise when Smith suddenly dropped his backpack and darted into an alley; there were shouts and a cacophony of barks. Charlie had broken out of his minor paralysis and raced up to where Smith had disappeared, peeping around the corner of concrete wall.  
   
Smith was hurling anything he could get his hands on at a pack of dogs that were tormenting a smaller one, a lump of white shaggy fur that was huddled near a dumpster. The other dogs would rush in and nip it, ignoring the enraged boy behind them. Smith stopped throwing garbage and then clenched his hands into tight fists, jerking his head in a decisively sharp manner at each attacking dog.  
   
Charlie's eyes widened when the bigger dogs suddenly fell on their sides and curled up, howling in what was obviously deep agony. Smith just watched them, and then stepped over to retrieve the beleaguered animal, crooning when the little dog shrank away from him. Charlie had backed away from the entrance of the alley and ran back down the sidewalk to crouch behind a postbox. Smith exited with the little dog held close to his chest; he knelt down for his knapsack and wobbled a little, laughing because the dog was trying to lick his face.  
   
Smith had continued on, talking to the dog in a soft voice and completely unaware that he'd had Charlie as a thunderstruck audience. That had been  _amazing,_  Charlie thought, and all his constant nervous urge to talk to the new kid increased in strength by at least five hundred percent.

 _At least._  
   
The day after that, Charlie had nervously planted himself in Smith's way as he'd walked down the corridor at school and spoke with him for the first time. Smith had appeared surprised, but not unfriendly, and they had had lunch together.   
   
Smith had a  _power._  That was so cool. Charlie would have given anything to have such a rad ability. He would use it on everybody who laughed at him in class... except Smith, who sometimes tried to mouth the answer to him, or just looked at him with that steadying expression. He would even use it on Coach Lawrence, who liked to make Charlie climb the ropes in gym, when he  _knew_ Charlie would get maybe a quarter of the way up and be stuck.  
   
Why didn't Smith blast everyone with his super-mind-pain-stuff? He did it to save Turbo from those other dogs, but... why not on people?  
   
The doorbell rang. Charlie was chasing the last bit of pasta around the bowl with his spoon, when he heard his sister say, "Oh,  _hi_ , Smith."  
   
Charlie flung himself off his stool, nearly braining himself on the edge of the counter behind him because he'd had his feet hooked over the crossbar of the stool's legs; when he gained his balance, he ran out to see his sister leaning against the doorway, smiling at his friend.  
   
Smith was smiling faintly back at her, but when he spotted Charlie, his smile grew a little more. Turbo, seated beside his feet, thumped his tail against the wooden surface in greeting.  
   
"Hi," Smith said.   
   
Charlie braked hard, balls of his feet skidding against the dark rug. "Hi," he said, disbelieving and breathless. Tiffany rolled her eyes and returned to her spot on the sofa.  
   
"Can you... I mean, want to go down to the lake now?" Smith asked, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He glanced down at his pair of red and white sneakers, before giving Charlie an almost shy look through his lowered lashes. "We were supposed to go yesterday, remember?"  
   
"Yeah!" Charlie was ready to rush out that very instant, but he glanced down at his pyjamas and felt his cheeks grow warm. It had definitely not been his intention to let Smith see him dressed in a pair of pyjamas that had a robot's face plastered all over them... no matter how awesome that robot was.  
   
"I have pyjamas like that," Smith remarked. "Really gnarly."

Charlie's pyjamas moved up in his esteem to the most choice set of clothing he ever owned; not the best wear for a day by the lake, though.   
   
"I'll be back," he said and stampeded up the stairs to change. He was changed in record time, but delayed for a few crucial and agonizing minutes when his father, ready for work, saw him in the hallway and asked him what his problem was last night. Charlie answered that he was just really sleepy, and he was going to go out again early with Smith right now.  
   
Fine, was his father's answer, just don't come back all droopy like yesterday, he had really scared his mother.  
   
Then, when Charlie managed to escape his father, he encountered his mother on the stairs; she had been to the kitchen to get the coffee started, and had seen Charlie's bowl. She had washed it, and berated him on why he should have, and how it made her life so hard when they just left their stuff all around for her to pick up after, or clean up their messes and he should really know better.  
   
Charlie, who had actually planned to wash it before he left, just nodded. From experience, it was best to let his mother run out of steam. Any answer would be regarded as back-talk, and would be used as fuel for another round of scolding.  
   
He was freed from the gauntlet relatively soon, and was finally on the front walkway with Smith, bicycle pointed into the direction of the lake. Smith got on his skateboard, and they rolled off. Turbo trotted alongside, tongue hanging out of his mouth.  
   
The lake they were headed to wasn't a large body of water. There were other ones, larger and nicer, which were focii for the older kids in their school, and people like Marcus Baker and Jimmy Ferguson who wanted to be totally in the in-crowd. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even a lake at all, just a wider section of a sluggish river, into which the water poured at one end, slipping over large, grey stones, and poured out the other end.  Added to that, a person had to fight their way through a lot of prickly branches just to get to it, and most people thought it wasn't worth the trouble at all.  
   
Charlie thought it was. It was worth stashing his bike and Smith's skateboard halfway down the leaf-lined slope from the road, partly because they didn't want to leave them on the soft shoulder up there, and mostly because they had a tacit agreement that bringing those contraptions of metal and rubber would spoil the magic of the place. Charlie had lived in this small yet sprawling town all his life, and he had never seen that little spot before, so close to the rushing civilization of the road but removed enough for it to be a completely different world. Smith had shown him earlier in the year, when the air was still biting with the teeth of a winter wind. He called it a lake with a little laugh, and claimed that it would be so awesome in the summer.  
   
Charlie liked it so much, that when he burst through the final set of branches, he set his hands on his hips, akimbo like his mother did sometimes and took a deep breath of the quiet morning air.  
   
"Come on." Smith clambered over some large rocks which served as the shoreline for the river, decided which one would be comfortable enough to sit down on and then did just so. Charlie made his way over, arms held out to keep his balance on the curved, gritty surfaces and crouched down, wrapping his arms around his knees and looking into Smith's face.  
   
Smith looked back steadily enough.  
   
"You..." Charlie cleared his throat and swallowed. "You can... do things, right?"  
   
Smith's gaze was locked with his for about three loud thuds of Charlie's heart. Then, he looked away. "My mom said it would be okay to tell you," Smith told him. "She knows stuff like that."  
   
"Ohhh," Charlie said, and his lips were still formed in that 'o'-shape as he pondered something else. Then he pursed them a little before asking: "Wait... can your mom do things too?"  
   
Smith nodded, and twitched his left shoulder. "Yeah."  
   
Charlie waited, but Smith didn't seem inclined to say more on that. Still, he wanted to know so much, and so he asked, "Did you get it through the meteor-shower thing?"  
   
Smith said, "I don't know. My mother had hers from she was born. Me too."  
   
"Those meteor showers have been going on since...um, since forever," Charlie guessed. "Some people get more weird than others, I think. Maybe your mom was caught in one as a baby? And... then she had you?"  
   
One of Smith's shoulders, the right one this time, twitched in that quick, almost nervous motion. Charlie stared at him.  
   
"I want to tell you something," Smith said. His voice was very low as he stared at how the morning sunlight placed hard diamonds in the water. "If you're going to hate me or whatever, then you... I mean, it doesn't matter."  
   
"What?" Charlie released his knees and crawled over, placing his hand on Smith's back; Smith flinched and tried to move away, but Charlie crowded closer. "What happened?"  
   
Smith didn't talk for a long time. He stared at the opposite bank, with its protective wall of massive grey rocks and the foliage that rose up behind them, shielding them from sight and creating this still, perfect cocoon. When Smith cleared his throat, it was as loud as a gunshot in the quiet and Charlie jumped a little.  
   
"My sister... Shanice. She's like my mom and me, I guess." Smith's voice was a little hoarse. "She could show you pictures, you know? Make you see stuff that wasn't there."  
   
"Wow," Charlie breathed. "Awesome."  
   
Smith huffed a little, and Charlie could see the side of his cheek move up in a wry smile, barely there for a moment before it disappeared again.  
   
"She used to bug me all the time. Trick me with stuff. Sometimes she would make it hurt, where I couldn't reach to make it stop." Smith glanced at Charlie briefly, then looked away again. "And... and one day, she just kept going and going. I told her to stop, but she wouldn't listen. I kept yelling at her to leave me alone, and she didn't."  
   
"You... you hurt her really bad?" Charlie guessed and breathed out sharply when Smith allowed himself one miserable nod. "Oh boy."  
   
"Yeah. The doctors couldn't figure out what happened to her, but me and my parents know. She can't talk or walk now. I hurt somewhere in her  _mind_ , really really bad, and I can't ever fix it." Smith turned to look at Charlie, and there was a shadow covering his whole face that spoke directly to Charlie's heart; he felt it squeezing in his chest as he leaned over and gave Smith an awkward hug. Smith endured it and then held him away with a crooked grin.  
   
"But you should use it to help people!" Charlie said, holding onto Smith's arms. "I mean... you could be a superhero, like the Admiral! You'd just make any bank-robber hurt, but not too bad, right?"  
   
Smith was shaking his head. "No way, Charlie. No way, that's crazy. And I don't like using it. I'm never using it like that, ever again."  
   
"But you did it to save Turbo from those other dogs!"  
   
Smith leaned back to look him properly in the face. "You saw that? I didn't really want to do that," he muttered.  
   
"Of course I saw it! It was so awesome." Charlie bit his lip against his own excited gushing, for Smith was regarding him with a mixture of amusement and dismay. "Smith--"  
   
"Charlie," Smith said. "I said  _no way_."  
   
Charlie pouted. "It's not fair," he grumbled, flinging himself down beside Smith; the rounded stone was implacably cold and hard against his cheek and stomach, even as he pillowed his head on his arms and frowned at the material of Smith's shorts, which were about four inches from his face. On the other side of Smith, Charlie could see the pointed tips of Turbo's tufted ears. "You know what I could do with an awesome power like that? And you used it on the dogs, anyway--"  
   
"I didn't use as much as I could have," Smith said dismissively, and Charlie scowled even more. "All I wanted to do was to get them away from Turbo. He was just a puppy." His hand reached out almost in a dreamy manner and buried itself in Turbo's dirty-white fur, fingers the same shade as the dark honey Mrs. Shephard used to sweeten her tea.   
   
"And I want to help people!" Charlie glared up at him from the corner of his eye. Smith was looking down at him, his curls blown across his face by the quickening breeze. "Everybody who ever got pushed around by guys like Marcus and Jimmy, who had their lunch-money taken away or... or their nurples purpled! I'd help them! But I'm not special like you or your mom or your sister... wait, is your dad like the rest of you?"  
   
"Nah. Just a doctor, you know that." Smith was shaking his head a little. He had the same expression Charlie's mother got when she thought he was being strange, purposefully obtuse, or both at the same time. "Being special isn't all that awesome. My dad isn't like the rest of us, but he still saves people. Sometimes being special is a pain in the ass."  
   
Charlie giggled; he couldn't help it, 'ass' was a word his mother said he shouldn't use right in front of her. Of course, his brother said it all the time and got away with it. Smith's responding smile was faint, but at least it stayed in place, and his expression didn't have that haunted quality which had dominated his face a few moments ago. Now, he looked like any other kid, instead of reminding Charlie a bit of Mrs. Weston down the street. Mrs Weston sat every day on her porch with her six old plump cats (all of which glared at Charlie with that common feline air of aloof mistrust as he sped past on his bike). Charlie always felt the urge to sing out, "I didn't do  _anything_!"  just to shake Mrs. Weston out of her darkly resigned staring.

"Well, even if you're not gonna use your powers, you should still have a name." Charlie turned on his side and went up on his elbow. "A code-name."  
   
Smith shook his head, rolling his eyes. "What would I do with a code-name, when I'm not going to ever use what I can do on anybody,  _ever_?" He narrowed his eyes as he stressed that last word again, but Charlie had heard his father say  _never and ever are words a man can't think of_  ; although Charlie couldn't understand his dad sometimes, he thought he could grasp even that concept a little.  
   
Charlie said, "I'm going to find you a really great code-name, Smith." He was very serious. Smith just shook his head and got to his feet, brushing at the seat of his shorts with one hand, while using the other to shade against the yellow rays that had finally struggled through the thick layer of leaves which surrounded their very own lake, landing on Smith and blurring the edges of his body. Smith looked almost like... like one of those angels that Charlie saw in many pictures that decorated his Aunt Claire's house.   
   
Then, Smith turned his head and smiled down at Charlie. He held out one hand.   
   
"Let's go." He hauled Charlie to his feet and they faced the growing morning together.   
   
As they caught frogs and ran through the brush together, Charlie pondered.  
   
"Headache Man?" he suggested once and Smith goggled at him as they were picking their way through an abandoned barn, the scratchy-sweet smell of old hay layered like a thick blanket in the air.  
   
Motes of dust descended on the pencil-thin beams of light that came through holes in the roof.  
   
"Headache Man?" Smith suddenly sneezed and then wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. "That sounds weird. And I don't think I give people just headaches, I--well, I think they feel it in other places, even though I'm not really thinking about those other places  _directly_ , and..." he sighed. "I dunno."  
   
"How does it work?"   
   
"I said I don't know," Smith repeated, a hint of impatience twisting around in his normally calm tone. "It just... happens."  
   
Charlie went to pull ineffectually at the door of a rusty car that was leaning in the corner like a drunk person. "What do you think it feels like?" The door gave way with a mighty creak and Charlie peered at the cracked leather of the seats. He looked up through the grime-streaked and cracked windshield. Smith was looking back at him with shadowed eyes.  
   
"Maybe like shooting somebody with a mind-bullet," Smith said, voice flat. "Maybe it feels like punishment."  
   
He turned on his heel and walked towards the doors of the barn, which appeared to be twice as drunk as the car. He pushed on one them, allowing Turbo to trot out, and then went out himself.  
   
"Punishment?" Charlie suggested when they were walking through the tall grass at the back of the quiet strip-mall. The grass made swishing sounds against their legs and shorts. Much later, Charlie would regret doing that, because the blades of grass would leave tiny welts on his skin, which would become irritated as soon as he took a bath. Not that it would stop him from doing it again, though.  
   
"What?" Smith had been throwing a stick for Turbo to go after and bring back, and now he held it in his hands, twirling it in his fingers. "What's that?"  
   
"A code-name!  _Punishment,_ " Charlie intoned, holding up his arms as if to frame the name in shining letters in the space between his hands, and Smith rolled his eyes.  
   
"No way."  
   
When they parted for the evening, Charlie went home and ate his dinner. He thought so hard that his mom asked what was wrong with his eyes, he was squinting so hard. Before he went to bed, he went to the small, crammed bookshelf that was tucked into one corner of the TV room, and knelt down in front of it. The set of encyclopaedias that his mother had bought from a man who had come to the door one day were lined up on the bottom shelf. As a matter of fact, the first two volumes were not encyclopaedias at all, but two large dictionaries. Charlie tugged out the second one which had  _P_  in there, and went looking for 'Pain'.  
   
"I got it," Charlie said the next day as they stood on the curb in front of the corner-store. His eyes felt completely massive with hope behind his glasses as he yanked a piece of paper out of his pocket; it had been stolen from the pad that was fixed magnetically to the fridge. On the paper (which was narrow and long, with a sweetly cream colour with brown lines, the words  _SHOPPING LIST_  written on the top. Charlie's mother hardly used it), Charlie's handwriting cramped at the top right corner.  
   
Smith took a sip from his ice-cold Slushie and peered at the paper that Charlie held up to his face. His dark, thick eyebrows furrowed together. "Strafe?" he read aloud.  
   
"Yeah! Look." Charlie twisted around his wrist so that he could read from his notes: "... _to attack (ground troops or installations) by airplanes with machine-gun fire_...isn't that awesome? And then...to reprimand viciously," he read aloud with great care. "But here's my favourite:  _to punish._  That's from German, or something. I think so, anyway."  
   
"Strafe." Smith rolled the word around in his mouth, to Charlie's great delight. He shrugged. "Not bad."  
   
Charlie did a little dance in the spot, and nearly dropped his Slushie. "Yeah!"  
   
"It's not like I'm going to use it, though," Smith warned. "Okay?"  
   
Charlie was a bit deflated, but he still grinned up at Smith and reached out to stuff the paper in the pocket of the striped shirt Smith wore. "There," he said, and patted the pocket amiably. "You just keep it, Smith." He winked up at Smith, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I mean,  _Strafe_ ," he whispered.  
   
Smith shook his head and kept sipping at his drink. Turbo gazed across the street at a few other kids that were horsing around. Marcus and Jimmy weren't among them, but they were still older kids; Charlie shuffled a bit closer to Smith, taking comfort in Smith's relatively normal height. Charlie's father was a big, tall man, and his brother was built that way as well; hopefully, he wouldn't be the tiniest skinniest kid in class forever, smaller than even the  _girls_.  
   
"Want to go back to the lake?" Smith asked, tossing his empty cup into a nearby trashcan. Charlie tossed his too, even though there was still a bit left in the bottom to chase with his straw, and scattered off with the boy who was his best friend in the whole wide world.

## ii. Stellar

  


All through that dreaming summer, Charlie roamed from corner to corner of the small town with Smith. They climbed over fences and crawled through large pipes that had been abandoned in old fields after roadwork. They started to build a little clubhouse (completely secret, of course). They threw sticks for Turbo, and went to stare at the bulky black shapes of the new video-game consoles that were carefully posed in the dusty window of a toy-store. Charlie  _loved_  the idea of playing games on a television. That was so awesome!  
   
What was more awesome was just hanging around with Smith, who knew how to start a small fire in the woods and was careful to make sure it was completely out when they left. Why they needed a fire escaped Charlie for the moment, but he was pretty sure there was a reason. They splashed around in their lake, dunking each other by the head and laughing their heads off. He and Smith caught fireflies in the dusk, placing them in glass bottles and used them to illuminate the small tent that Smith's dad put up in the backyard for them.  
   
If asked, Charlie would say that it was the best summer in his life. That summer gained its own glow in his memory, tinted at the edges with the warmth of Smith's slow smile in the sunlight. After that summer, Charlie would not see Smith again, at least not for another eight years. He held that summer very close to his heart.  
   
Not even Smith would know.  
   
Charlie woke up for another day with an eager smile on his face; it seemed that he always got up that way, and this day was no different. He stumbled out of bed, ignoring Bradley's muttered complaints at all his noise, and went to get his teeth cleaned and splashed some water on his face. He went back to his room to find a shirt and shorts that weren't too dirty, put them on and ran downstairs.  
   
"Whoa there," his dad called as he skidded past the television room. "Charlie, hang on a second, kiddo."  
   
"Dad?" Charlie had gone a few feet past the door and had to retrace his steps. He peeked around the corner of the doorway, blinking when he found his father's gaze fixed on him.  
   
"Charlie, don't stay out too late today. Star folks said we're gonna have a shower." His father's voice was gruff and annoyed, slouching down even more in his eyesore of a recliner (according to Charlie's mother) but Charlie felt his face go warm with surprise and excitement. "Nobody goes outside after seven, hear me?"  
   
" _Tonight_?" Charlie asked in a weak voice and his father frowned at him for a moment, then waved him over. Charlie put down the sneakers he'd been carrying and went into the room. He leaned against the worn arm of the recliner, feeling the ribbing press against the bone of his hip. There was that newslady on Channel 6, sitting behind her wide desk, her feathered hair bushing out around her head. Her expression appeared as excited as how Charlie's felt, her eyes wide behind the massive red glasses she was sporting.  
   
"Again, we're announcing the state of emergency. Police Chief Wilkinson is issuing a town-wide curfew, and all residents and non-essential personnel of the hospital and army  _must stay indoors_. Let's have a bit more information on this phenomenon that's been affecting us for the past ten years." She shuffled around her stack of papers and pulled out a sheet, reading from it: "'The Kent-W meteor shower is believed to occur when the Earth passes through the dust-trail of an unknown comet. Due to the erratic behaviour of this comet and the fact that the activity does not occur on a regular schedule, the showers can only be predicted a few hours in advance. Meteorologists are baffled as to the origin of the comet, and geneticists are still investigating the effects of the meteor-rocks on individuals.' Folks," she said very seriously, laying down the report on the desks, "too many people have died due to direct contact with the foreign material. We have more than enough altered heroes. Do not take the chances with the meteor shower, please. Now, on to sports with James!"  
   
Charlie blinked rapidly as the camera switched to a man in an ill-fitting suit, who waved his arms around as he ranted about last night's scores. Charlie turned his head and looked at his father, who was giving him a stern stare.  
   
"But... it might not even hit near here," Charlie said weakly and his father's expression became wry.  
   
"Last year it didn't. But that comet's insane, Charlie." His father shifted around in his chair, trying to find a better spot to sink into. "It comes when it wants to, it moves all over the place, it lets off all this crazy space rock, and anyone who touches them gets killed--"  
   
"Or they get  _powers_ ," Charlie breathed out and bit his lip when his father's expression darkened.  
   
"Or they get powers," he agreed, but his disapproval was written clearly in the lines between his eyebrows. "A couple of them. The unlucky few. But let me tell you something, Charlie Chap: not everyone who gets good powers do good with 'em, you know?"  
   
Charlie nodded, a little tickled that his father would use that old baby-name for him, and a lot serious because the little engine of his mind was ticking over ever more rapidly. If he was one of those lucky few, he'd do  _lots_  of good. He'd even do Smith's good, because Smith had an awesome ability and wasn't even using it.  
   
He'd make sure that nobody ever hurt Smith or their families. He'd swoop in if there was trouble and save  _everybody_.  
   
Charlie was daydreaming about having laser-eyes, even as the woman on the screen admonished that any small rocks should not be handled in any manner, and that if a meteorite had not dissipated as it should after a few hours, then the National Astronomical Unit should be contacted as soon as possible. He thought about super-speed like the Admiral, as he rode out to Smith's house and dropped his bike on the paved driveway. Smith slipped out the door before he even got up the steps to the front door.  
   
"My mother's sick," Smith said almost apologetically. "So you can't come inside, okay?"  
   
"The 'flu?" Charlie asked, following Smith back down the few steps and getting on his bike. "Hay fever? Measles? Asthma?" He had all of these, in distressing regularity. It still didn't stop him from going out and rambling all over the place with Smith. He just took his inhaler with him in case he got all wheezy from asthma; it bulked up in the pockets of his shorts, as it was doing now. For some reason, Bradley thought the sight of that was the heights of hilarity, and had spent about fifteen minutes the other day laughing his head off.  
   
Smith had simply asked him what it was he had in his pocket, and when Charlie told him (feeling awkward and embarrassed) Smith just nodded and went back to the secret clubhouse they were building nearby their lake.   
   
"No." Smith retrieved his skateboard from where it was lying on its side in the dewy grass and tossed it, wheel-side down, on the pavement. "She just... when the meteor shower comes around, she--" Smith broke off and took a quick breath before going on: "She knows more things about people that she usually does. And she can hear what they're thinking, even louder. Turbo's gonna stay with her. Dogs' thoughts are less complicated, she says."  
   
Charlie stared at Smith with a mixture of awe and sheer jealousy. He really couldn't believe it; what must it be like to live in Smith's family? He actually asked this as they rode off.  
   
"Trust me, it isn't as awesome as you think it is," Smith answered as they wheeled down his street and waited at the junction to turn left. "She taught me how to block her, but I forget sometimes and then I have her going, _'Smith Carlisle Shephard, I can't believe you THOUGHT that!'_ It's really creepy."  
   
"Oh boy," Charlie chortled as he pedalled beside Smith. " _Carlisle_?"  
   
"One of my dad's favourite uncles." Smith wrinkled his nose and stopped to attempt an ollie. He failed spectacularly, nearly falling on his face, but recovered his balance and tried again. It was slightly better this time, and they shared a quick laugh.   
   
Smith's dark eyes twinkled, and Charlie really liked it when they were focused solely on him. Before he had manage to get Smith to talk to him, Charlie had spent a lot of time just staring at the other boy; during lunch, or gym or even class, he'd tried to find the proper angle to peek at Smith. He noticed small things, like the small scar Smith had in his left eyebrow, or the almost undetectable spray of brown freckles across the bridge of his nose. Charlie had freckles on his own pale skin too, numerous like stars across his shoulders and scrawny chest, and it pleased him for some reason that Smith had freckles too... even if one had to look very carefully to spot them. But they were there, as nice as the fact that Smith had impossibly long, thick lashes. A lot of the girls in their class were always giggling in corners about Smith.  
   
Of course, Charlie just had to come out with: "Carlisle isn't as cool as Strafe, though." He giggled as Smith closed his eyes briefly in mock-annoyance... and tumbled properly off his skateboard, falling onto someone's front lawn with a loud  _oof!_  He was groaning when Charlie circled back on his bicycle, warbling with laughter. Charlie braked and placed a foot on the pavement, watching Smith rub his offended bottom with a highly injured air, eyes closed and lips curled into a pout. His lashes were  _so long_.  
   
Instead of pointing that out, Charlie said, "Aww, come on now. The great Strafe can't be turned back like a little fall like that! He'll save the world!"  
   
"Oh, shut up about all that crap," Smith grumbled, but when he picked himself up and brushed the grass off his backside, one side of his mouth was crooked up in a half-reluctant smile. Charlie decided that he was going to call Smith by his code-name at least once every day. Maybe he'd get to be a sidekick for when Smith realized he should be out there superheroing all over the place. That would be  _great_. They'd probably drive a real fast car, he'd get his dad to set it up, and they'd have a secret hide-out and maybe they'd even--

"Charlie."

Charlie blinked; Smith was leaning over the handlebars of his bike, staring at him with amused concern. He looked as if he had been talking to Charlie for a few moments and had just noticed that Charlie hadn't been entirely here with him.   
   
"Yeah?"  Charlie gave him a wide grin and Smith smiled in return.  
   
"Come on." Smith inclined his head in the direction of their lake. He grabbed up his skateboard and ran with it, not bothering to hop on and ride the short distance.  
   
They spent that afternoon using a couple of hammers pilfered from Dr. Shephard's basement workshop to beat a few nails (also taken from said workshop) into the rough planks that had been discarded at the dump and had been dragged all this way to form the roof of their little clubhouse. It was so warm, even under the protective canopy of the trees, that they had removed their shirts and were happily at work.   
   
Charlie wasn't paying attention, saying something that caused Smith to giggle, when he missed his nail completely and pounded his thumb instead.  
   
"Ow!" He dropped his hammer and hopped around on the leaf-strewn ground as his thumb throbbed in agony. "Ouch ouch  _owwww_!"  
   
"Wait, let me see!" Smith said, the two of them chasing around in circles as Charlie spun around clutching his left wrist with his right hand, howling his head off. "Charlie, quit yelling! Lemme see! It could be broken or some--"  
   
"Do something!" Charlie stopped abruptly and thrust his injured hand into Smith's face, almost putting out his eye. "Take it away!"  
   
"Take...  _what_?"  
   
"You can give pain," Charlie said, sniffling. His poor thumb felt so  _bad_. "So take it away!"  
   
Smith actually backed away from him, holding both hands up as if he was trying to calm a wild animal. The palms of his hands were streaked with dirt. "I can't do that, Charlie," he said, voice very quiet and strained.  
   
"You never tried." Charlie stomped over to him and held up his thumb again. His eyes were all watery from the pain. "It hurts really bad, Smith. Make it stop, please?"  
   
Smith appeared as if he was choosing between running away and standing his ground; after a few moments, during which Charlie's thumb suffered so horribly (and Charlie by extension), he reached out and took Charlie's hand very gently, holding it so close to his face that Charlie felt his warm breath brushing over his fingers. His gaze was downcast as he turned over Charlie's hand, palm up, and inspected that side very closely as well.  
   
"Hurts," Charlie murmured and froze when Smith's eyelids suddenly flickered up, and Smith looked right into his eyes. Charlie's breath seemed to curdle, pressing hotly on the inside of his throat, unmoving.  
   
There was a strange sensation, and it was  _inside his head._  Light, feathery and wholly alien to anything Charlie had ever felt before, it skimmed around before it sharpened and arrowed in. Charlie screamed; the pain in his thumb became white-hot, multiplied in intensity by at least a magnitude of a hundred. It spread to the other fingers and up his left arm with frightening speed, flushing the rest of his body in intense waves. Charlie barely restrained an urge to pee out of sheer agony. By the time Smith dropped his hand and snapped his head away, breaking their locked stare, Charlie was trembling and he wanted to puke. At least his thumb didn't feel so bad now, not after all of  _that_. It seemed that his whole world had been made up of torment, and he couldn't do anything to break away from it.  
   
Charlie swallowed, hard. Shanice had gone through that... no wonder Smith had broken her. He glanced down at his body, and noticed that apart from his skin gone all red, there was nothing to indicate the turmoil that he had just been through. Smith... Smith had made him  _think_  he'd been in pain.   
   
"Why'd you let me do that!" he heard Smith cry out. Charlie swallowed; his throat felt sore and his lips were dry. He looked down and noticed with shock that Smith was kneeling on the ground, arms wrapped around himself.   
   
"Smith, I'm okay," Charlie lied, kneeling down too and shuffling close to his friend. Smith flinched when Charlie put his arms around his shoulders, moving carefully. He put his forehead against Smith's cheek, feeling those soft curls brush against his face. "Smith--"  
   
"No, I'm going home, I didn't mean to do that, I'm… I'm just gonna…" Smith heaved a deep, unsteady breath. He sounded as if he was trying not to cry. He tried to pull away from Charlie's hold, but Charlie locked his arms even more tightly around Smith's shoulders.  
   
"Smith,  _please_  don't go," Charlie pleaded, pulling back to look Smith right in the eye; Smith kept his gaze averted. "I didn't mean to make you do that. I thought if... I thought you could take pain away."  
   
"Well, I can't," Smith said in the grumpiest tone Charlie had ever heard him use. At least he had stopped trying to shrug off Charlie's arms. "Now we  _both_ know that."  
   
"I'm sorry, Smith." Charlie's voice was very soft, almost a whisper. He pressed his forehead against Smith's cheek again, and waited for Smith to storm off, leaving him here alone by their lake.   
   
Smith sighed heavily. His arm snuck around Charlie's waist, and squeezed briefly. Then, he pulled Charlie's arm from around his neck, and held Charlie's wrist gently. Holding onto Charlie's hammered thumb, he bent it a little. Charlie hissed, but didn't pull away.  
   
"Not broken," Smith breathed out in relief. "It's gonna be okay."  
   
Charlie nodded, rocking their heads in unison. Smith exhaled heavily once more, and then untangled himself very slowly from Charlie's grip. He got to his feet and cleared his throat, looking at their construction work.  
   
Charlie got to his feet too, leaning against Smith's warm side.   
   
"Let's finish it," he said, wriggling his thumb. The pain was almost gone; if he hadn't been such a baby, like Tiffany and Bradley said he was, it would have gotten better by itself, and he wouldn't have had to force Smith to do that. He had made a promise to not make Smith feel bad, and there he was, breaking that promise.  
   
"You can handle that?" Smith gave his thumb a sidelong glance. Charlie dropped him a very large wink and Smith narrowed his eyes in suspicion.  
   
"I'm Strafe's sidekick, I can handle  _anything._ "  
   
"How many times I said that you gotta shut  _up_  about that." Smith glared at him, but it had little heat in it. As a matter of fact, he smiled a little right afterwards and Charlie's heart felt like it was hopping in his chest; that wasn't healthy at all, but it still felt that way.  
   
"Okay, I think that's good," Smith said about an hour later, when the sun's afternoon rays stretched through the leaves and lay a golden sheen over everything. Charlie tossed his hammer into the tackle-box they'd been using to carry around their tools, armed the sweat from his forehead and put his hands on his hips. His skin felt a little tingly, maybe from the sunlight or probably a physical recollection of what Smith had done, but it didn't hurt.  
   
"Not bad, right?" Charlie said with great pride. Smith nodded and pulled on his shirt.  
   
"It's good," he agreed and stretched, hands linked over his head. "Let's go home." He shook out his arms, looking at Charlie very carefully. "Make sure you stay inside, okay? Tonight, I mean. During the meteor shower."  
   
"Yeah, definitely," Charlie lied. Smith folded his hands across his chest, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. Charlie puffed up defensively. "I won't!"  
   
"People touched those rocks and  _died_ , Charlie." Smith walked over to him and placed his hands on Charlie's shoulders. They were warm against Charlie's bare skin, and heavy. "Don't do anything stupid, okay?"  
   
"Jeez, Smith, I--"  
   
"You're my best friend," Smith said very softly. "Okay? I never had a best friend before, but now there's you. So  _don't do anything stupid_." Smith punctuated each space in between those last four words with a little shake, and then let him go with a wry smile. Charlie stumbled back and then hopped forward again, shoving Smith playfully when he actually wanted to hug him. He was Smith's  _best friend_.  
   
Smith just said so.  
   
Smith deserved a stronger best friend, and Charlie... Charlie could give that to him.  
   
"Ok," Smith said. "Let's go."  
   
Heavy clouds piled up in the sky as they made their way home, much to Charlie's deep disappointment. A summer storm would obscure the meteor shower, and Charlie hoped it would blow away as fast as possible. Yet, as he paused with Smith at the intersection which separated their two paths, heavy droplets began to patter around them, small dark patches widening in the pavement as the water landed. The sharp smell of rain hitting hot tarmac rose in the air, and Smith gave him a quick, friendly clap on the shoulder, a sweet smile and then he raced off on his skateboard. Charlie stood in the increasingly heavy rain, watching Smith's shirt getting soaked, his dark hair falling past his shoulders now that the wild curls were wet. Charlie wiped the water from his glasses in vain and pedalled home.  
   
His father was on the porch, hand held over his eyes as if the sun was out shining straight into them. Charlie slid off his bike next to his father's truck, walking it a few steps to shove it underneath the half raised door of the garage. As long as Charlie had known himself, his father had never parked  _inside_  the garage; all sorts of other things were stuffed into it, though, and his bike scraped on some metal object as he pushed it in. When he was done with that, he brushed his hands off as he climbed up the few steps to the narrow porch.  
   
His father didn't say anything; he just reached out as soon as Charlie was close, ruffling his hair and leading him inside with one big hand against the back of Charlie's neck. That made him think of how Smith hands had felt, and for some reason Charlie felt warm all over, and was very quiet during dinner. Usually, he would be the one yapping along about what happened during the day and who had said what. His father, not the most verbose of men, would give him withering stares at his chattiness; tonight, Charlie got curious looks as he toyed with his mashed potatoes and peas.  
   
The rain fell harder and his mother said, with much satisfaction, " _Good_. At least everyone will stay indoors now."  
   
Bradley said, "Oh crap, the viewing party is off tonight."  
   
Their parents gave him identical censorious glares.   
   
"Don't tell me you were planning on  _going out_ ," Mr. Parks growled. Bradley jerked his shoulders, but didn't answer. "Nobody goes out tonight, Brad."  
   
"It was going to be at Mitzi's parent's conservatory," Brad said. "Has a glass roof and everything, it would have been fine."  
   
"You don't know that, so listen to your father," Mrs. Parks said, sounding a bit shrill. "Tiffany!"  
   
Tiffany, who had excused herself a few minutes ago to go chat on the phone, yelled back, "Nobody goes outside, got it!"  
   
"Got that, Charlie Chap?" Charlie's father gazed at him from under his bushy blond eyebrows.  
   
"Stupid," Brad said under his breath, low enough that their father wouldn't hear. Charlie did, though, but he gave his father a brief smile.  
   
"Got it, Dad."  
   
"Good."  
   
The rain abated just a bit as Charlie brushed his teeth and put on his robot pj's. He went to bed, curled under his light sheet, listening to Brad's thick snores and the murmur of the television downstairs as his dad watched Carson. He jerked out of a half-doze when his father pushed the door open, and evened out his breathing to mimic deep sleep. There was a long pause and then the door to the bedroom closed with a gentle  _click._  Charlie struggled to keep awake as he listened to his dad use the bathroom and then go into his own bedroom.   
   
Charlie waited a half hour more... at least, it  _felt_  like half an hour but he couldn't really tell, he had no watch and the alarm clock that was in his and Brad's room had been destroyed a few years ago by his brother, in a fit of morning crankiness. He had thrown it against the wall when it had started to alarm, and it never worked again since then. Charlie had been a little upset; he had  _liked_  that alarm-clock, with its bright-red paint and the two bells on either side of the circular face.  
   
He shifted quietly in bed and slipped out from under the sheets, reaching out to pluck his glasses from the messy night-table that stood between his and Bradley's beds. Before Brad had come into the room for bed, Charlie had pulled on a pair of jeans and two shirts, one with longer sleeves than the other. It had been pretty warm for a while, since he had to be buried under the covers in his layers of clothing. He froze as Bradley muttered in his sleep and rolled over, feet hanging off the end of the bed. Charlie knelt down slowly, pulled out his sneakers from under the bed, and then crept to the door.   
   
Charlie tiptoed down the staircase with exaggerated care, feeling a bit like a cartoon character. He placed his feet very carefully on each step, not quite remembering where the creaky ones were.  
   
Everything looked so different in the dark; Charlie, who was the kind of person who slept right through the night without getting up, thought that it was all deliciously creepy. He slipped past the kitchen and the TV room, and finally got to the front door. He was half-convinced that as soon as he put his hand on the doorknob, a light would snap on and his parents would be glaring at him from the top of the staircase; he practically saw the light shining in his eyes as he turned the knob and pulled it open.  
   
However, there was no light, no berating parent. He scuttled outside and closed it, hoping to get back early enough to get it locked before his father went to work in the morning. He sat on the lowest step and pulled on his sneakers, tugging the laces extra tight. Rain-water dripped off the eaves of the house and the leaves of the tree that dominated their front yard. At least the rain had stopped, but there was still a heavy blanket of clouds in the sky. Charlie frowned up at this obscuring layer... then caught his breath as a pale light streaked across the sky. It blazed bright for few seconds, then abruptly disappeared.  
   
Charlie didn't even bother going for his bike; the garage-door was locked tightly, anyway, his father's Chevy parked close to it. He took off running, heading in the direction he though that meteor might have landed.   
   
After about ten minutes of that, Charlie wished he  _had_  taken the time to retrieve his bike. He would have had to go through the kitchen door which led into the garage. The bicycle might have made some noise being dragged through the house, but at least he would have been cycling in comfort instead of walking forlornly past darkened houses with a stitch in his side.  
   
He decided that he would head to their clubhouse; he had come far enough that it was just a few minutes away. The Strafe and.... and Charlie Headquarters! Charlie decided that he would have to find a good name for himself. Shades? He could get some cool glasses instead of this dorky pair, tinted dark so that evil-doers wouldn't see his eyes. They'd be pretty scared of that, Charlie opined. Smith could inflict pain on someone just by looking into their eyes, then Charlie would  _not_  show his eyes and people would be confused.  
   
Strafe and Shades.  _Awesome_.  
   
He made his way very carefully down to the lake, slinking around the thick trunks of the trees. It was a good thing he had the long-sleeved shirt on, or the barks of the trunks would have scraped the skin of his arms. His mother would definitely notice them and question him about it.  
   
The whitewash they had slopped on the planks caused the small structure to gleam faintly. Charlie made his way to the door, untying the rope that served as a lock. He slid out the rope from the two holes, one in the door and one in the wall, and opened it, going inside. He looked around, smiling faintly at the crazy heaps of stuff they had in here, collected even while they had been building their clubhouse; they had simply built right over their treasure. Such awesome junk from the dump, like a large pot that had a dent in one side, and what looked like an artist's easel which was missing the back leg. He had no idea what they would do with something like that. Maybe use it to float in their lake? The pot was huge enough for Charlie to fit in there with his legs pulled up to his chest; they had taken it here by placing it on Smith's skateboard and pushing it.  
   
That would be a good idea, using it for a little boat. Charlie hoped he remembered to tell Smith in the morning. He clambered up onto an upside-down crate and drew his knees up, wrapping his hands around his chest and leaned back against the cool timber. The crickets sang outside, and he could see the sky through some knotholes in the wood.   
   
Even though Charlie was fairly comfortable, physically at least, an uneasy feeling began to settle around his shoulders. He hunched his shoulders as if to ward off a blow, and his eyes darted around the small, dim space. It wasn't too scary in here, because he and Smith had built it. It was  _their_  place, their special headquarters... but he had the strangest sensation that there was something watching the tiny structure from outside.  
   
He scoffed at himself, and then folded his lips in. The sound of his self-mocking exhalation seemed very loud, and even the crickets went quiet. Charlie swallowed; maybe he should have gone over to Smith's house and throw stones at his window until he woke up. Smith would have come with him and then he wouldn't have been alone now. He glanced around at their precious store of junk... and decided that he'd had enough meteor-watching for one night. He had only seen that one, anyway, and no other as he had walked through the quiet neighbourhood.   
   
Charlie took a few moments to rebuild his bravery, telling himself that Smith wouldn't be so scared by himself. He hopped off the crate and went out the door like a flash, not bothering to secure it again with the rope. Smith wouldn't be too mad, anyway, so he left it, and clambered up the slope to the road; the water of the stream was a low mutter in the dark. He was glad he didn't have to cross it at any point; they had built on the road-side of the river, the clubhouse backed up against the wide trunk of one tree.  
   
Charlie sighed in relief when he got up to the road and began to make his way home. He felt better already, and it was close to dawn, for there was a light growing on his left.   
   
He stopped and frowned; that wasn't right. The east was on his  _right_ whenever he was going home _._  Smith had taught him that. Very slowly, Charlie turned his head towards the left and felt goosebumps rush across his skin.   
   
A bright light was rushing towards him through the trees. It threw the leaves and branches into stark contrast,  the shadows arching and leaning past in quick succession. Charlie turned and tried to run, suddenly extremely afraid of something that he had actually wanted for so long.  _It could kill you,_ he heard both Smith's voice and his dad's echoing together in his memory. He tried to get out of the way as fast as possible, but it seemed as if he was moving through molasses.  
   
It hit him, right in the back. Charlie cried out as an electrical surge seemed to run through his whole body and he actually went up on tiptoes from the sensation. He felt his skin skitter and shift on his bones, and his glasses fell from his face as his head rocked from side to side; he barely heard it clatter on the hard tarmac.  
   
Then he was free of whatever held him. He collapsed into the grass on the side of the road, rolled bonelessly down the slope and fetched up against the trunk of a tree. He'd always heard when people said someone  _blacked out_ , and he was a bit bemused to find that the phrase was a very accurate one. The darkness was very complete.

 _Charles Parks._  
   
Charlie wriggled and tried to open his eyes. He was very cold and he couldn't move.

_Charles. Where are you._

_Miz Shephard?_  Charlie thought, and a sensation of relief washed over him. It wasn't a feeling that came from himself, however. He frowned and tried to shift his arms, but they refused to move.

 _Charles. Don't worry. Smith's coming for you._  
   
Smith! Charlie sure would be glad to see him. He seemed to hear Mrs. Shephard speak to someone else, or maybe she was  _thinking_  it at another person. He managed to crack his eyelids open, and closed them quickly as the dawn light seemed to drive large rusty stakes in his eyes. A car passed on the road above and then another. Something bit Charlie on his ankle, an ant or something, but he didn't feel any pain. He  _knew_  something bit him, but that ache just didn't register at all.  
   
Weird.  
   
Another car passed, and then Charlie heard the sharp squeal of brakes. Doors slammed, and if Charlie wasn't already immobile, he would have melted a little at the sound of Smith screaming his name.  
   
"Charlie!" Smith bellowed. "Charlie! Where are you?"

_I'm here!_

_You're close!_  Mrs. Shephard thought loudly.  _Smith, Roger, go back a little! Now go down that little hill, right there!_  
   
"Charlie!" Smith tumbled down the slope; Charlie could hear him moving through the bushes with great speed. "Dad, come on!"  
   
Charlie felt Smith's hands on his face, so warm and gentle. He tried to say something, but all that escaped was a low whimper.  
   
"Let me see, Smith." Smith's dad spoke in a calm, low timbre. Smith's hands moved away from Charlie's face, and another, larger hand pressed against Charlie's neck, feeling the pulse that throbbed there. "Charlie? Charlie, it's Dr. Shephard. Can you hear me?"

 _Yes_ , Charlie wanted to say, but all that managed to escape between his tightly clenched lips was the last consonant: "…ssss."  
   
"Dad, please do something," Smith said, and his voice wavered. "Please, don't let Charlie die."  
   
"Don't think that," Dr. Shephard said, sharply but not unkindly, and then Charlie found himself being lifted. "We're going to take him to the clinic and do the best we can. Okay, Smith?"  
   
There were a few thick sniffles and Charlie was amazed. Smith was  _crying_  for him.  
   
"Okay, Daddy," Smith said, sounding very young and unhappy. Charlie was carried to the car, and placed into the back seat. Smith sat in the back too, and Charlie's head rested in his lap. Dr. Shephard threw a blanket over him and tucked in very tightly.  
   
"Hang on, Charlie," Smith whispered as the car started and they moved off. Charlie felt his hair being stroked. "Why'd you go out there? Did… did you touch one of the meteor-rocks?"

 _No, it touched me!_  Charlie thought excitedly and then deflated, albeit internally.  _But nothing happened, 'cept I can't move. That's not fair, Smith. I should have gotten powers._  
   
"I don't care if you have superpowers or whatever," Smith went on, his whisper barely audible. Charlie wondered if Smith had heard him thinking, like Mrs. Shephard. "Just… don't die. Stay with me, okay? I'll even use that name you came up with, um…"

 _Strafe._  
   
"Strafe," Smith sighed. "Come on, Charlie. Answer me?"  
   
"He's in some kind of shock," Dr. Shephard said from the front of the car. "He might not be able to say anything right now, Smith."  
   
"Sssss," Charlie pressed past rigid lips, just to prove him wrong. "Ssss.  _Mmmmm_."  
   
"Smith, right. That's me," Smith said and his fingers rubbed Charlie's scalp tenderly. "That's me."  
   
When they got to the clinic, Dr. Shephard shouted for a gurney, and Charlie was laid into it. Smith wanted to accompany him, but was told to wait outside.  
   
"I don't get it," Dr. Shephard muttered when he and another doctor were doing some tests on Charlie. "Everything seems fine. He's just not waking--"  
   
"What the… Roger, look at this. His skin, here. And… here. Put your face right down, I would have missed it if I wasn't looking closely."  
   
There was a long silence, and Charlie began to fret in earnest. What was going on? Was he turning green or something?  
   
"I don't know what that is," Dr. Shephard finally said; there was an odd twist to his voice.  
   
"You've never seen anything like that before?"  
   
"I  _just said_  I didn't know what that was," Dr. Shephard answered a bit testily; he sounded a lot like Smith when Smith got annoyed. He sighed. "Charlie, what the hell happened to you?"  
   
If Charlie could have answered, he would have said he really did not know. His parents were let in to see him, and his mother held his hand tightly and cried. His father brushed his hair from his forehead, but said nothing. Charlie heard his siblings outside his door, talking in low murmurs which increased in volume every time the door was opened. He was tired, and so he went to sleep.  
   
When he returned to consciousness, he felt something resting near his thigh and his hand was being clutched rather firmly. He opened his eyes, and found that he could. He attempted to raise his head a little, and, success! He looked down to see Smith sitting in a chair beside his bed, his head on the bed near Charlie's leg, Charlie's closest hand folded into one of his. He was fast asleep, but his eyebrows twitched now and again; he was drooling a little.  
   
Charlie put on his glasses and stifled a giggle, and then tugged on Smith's hand; Smith jerked and blinked his eyes open. Then he sat up and stared at Charlie.  
   
"You're awake," he said; his eyes were large and as Charlie watched with a bit of mortification, they began to water. "Lemme go get my dad," Smith said, wiping away the tears hurriedly and standing up to head for the door. He paused, and then returned to the bed, leaning down over Charlie to slip his hands around his neck. He gave Charlie a very gentle hug, before turning his head a little and kissing Charlie on the cheek.  
   
"I'm glad you're okay," Smith said. "I'm  _really_  glad."  
   
"Me too," Charlie whispered; kind of a nonsensical answer, but he was trying to get over his first kiss from another person who was not his mother or one of his many aunts. Smith was a  _boy_ , and so was Charlie, and now he was a little confused. Was he supposed to feel so melty and happy? And when Smith drew back and smiled right at him, their faces so close, should Charlie have wished that Smith would kiss him again, but on the mouth this time? He averted his gaze, hoping that Smith couldn't read any of that in his eyes. Maybe Smith didn't have his mother's abilities, but one could never be too sure.  
   
"Sorry," Smith said, and let out a nervous laugh. He pulled away completely and shuffled away from the bed. "You just woke up and I'm… I'll go get my dad."  
   
Smith didn't return for awhile, even though his father and a young nurse came in a few minutes later. Charlie really wanted to see him again, just to look at his face… at the same time, he was glad that Smith wasn't allowed in while his father was doing some tests. Charlie felt really queasy inside when he thought about Smith. It wasn't even a  _bad_ queasy either, it just made him feel hot and cold and… and  _weird_.  
   
"Charlie, do you remember what happened?" Dr. Shephard asked as he listened to Charlie's chest with his stethoscope. "Breathe in deep before you answer. And… let it out. One more time, big deep breath."  
   
"Something hit me, I think it was a meteor-rock," Charlie said quietly when he was done with all that deep breathing. He glanced over at the young nurse who was standing at a nearby table, fiddling with some equipment, and she appeared not to hear what he said. Charlie squinted; his vision was a bit blurry behind his glasses.  
   
"Charlie," Dr. Shephard sighed. "You weren't supposed to go out--"  
   
"I know." Charlie hung his head miserably. "I  _know_."  
   
"Well," Dr. Shephard said after a long moment, "you're alright, at least. And everything is quite normal, except…"  
   
Charlie waited for him to continue, but when he peeped up at Dr. Shephard's face, he wasn't even looking at Charlie, but staring at the opposite wall, deep in thought.  
   
"Except what, Mr. Shephard?" Charlie asked. Dr. Shephard shook himself a little, and then gave Charlie a distracted smile.  
   
"I doubt it's anything important," Dr. Shephard said and then placed his hand on Charlie's shoulder. "I'm going to tell your parents that they can take you home now. You're going to have to stay in bed for awhile, Charlie, get some rest at home."  
   
Charlie pouted a little, for he felt better and better by the minute. Dr. Shephard gave him a very stern look and he simply said, "Okay, Mr. Shephard."  
   
"Good." Dr. Shephard turned to leave, indicating that the young nurse should follow him, when Charlie called out to him. He turned back, eyebrows tilted in question.  
   
"Could you tell Mrs. Shephard thanks for me?" Charlie asked and bit his lip at the way Dr. Shephard's expression suddenly shuttered. "Please," he murmured and ducked his head, fingers plucking at the edge of the white sheet.  
   
"I will, Charlie," Dr. Shephard said and went out. Charlie stared down at his hand, remembering what that other doctor had said to Smith's dad. He raised his hand and looked closely at the pale skin. He brought it so close to his face that his eyes crossed and he had to pull it back a little. As far as he could tell, his skin looked pretty normal. Whatever it was they had seen must have faded away by now; however, when he rubbed the index finger of his other hand over his wrist, the skin there felt a little rougher than before. Charlie squinted at his hand and then jumped a little as the door burst open and his mother ran in.  
   
She didn't rebuke him too much; as a matter of fact, she was oddly quiet as she helped him out of the small hospital gown, and into a pair of his own pajama pants and a simple t-shirt. It was actually his favourite pair of robot pajama pants, and his face went red when he thought about Smith saying he liked them a lot.  
   
"You okay, Charlie?" His mother asked. She slung the bag she had brought his clothes in over one shoulder, and pulled out a comb, using it on his flyaway hair.  
   
"Yeah." He sat on the bed and allowed her to fuss over him, her fingers pressed gently to his chin to tilt his head from one side to the other. He looked up in his face, heart sinking when he realized that her eyes were puffy and red.  
   
"Charlie, what in the world did you think you were doing?" she asked when she replaced the comb in the bag. She held out a hand, obviously not waiting for an answer, but she squeezed his fingers when he placed his hand in hers. They walked out of the room, down the short hall and past the front desk with a nurse, who gave them a little wave before they went out the door.  
   
The sun was low in the sky when Charlie climbed into his father's truck, his mother sitting behind the wheel and starting the engine. She put the truck into gear in that careful manner she had when driving, and pulled out of the clinic's parking lot.  
   
"We're going for your father," she explained as they headed in the opposite direction of their home. "I dropped him off at work this morning, so I could use the truck to pick you up. Charlie?"  
   
"Yes?"  
   
"What happened out there?" She took her eyes off the road for just a moment, a brief glance that seemed to encompass his whole soul, then returned most of her attention to the road.  
   
"I think a meteor-rock hit me," Charlie said, picking at a frayed section of the brown cloth that covered the seat. He grabbed onto the door handle when his mother swerved dangerously to the other side of the road. "Mom!"  
   
He looked at the side of her face as she straightened the wheel; her skin had gone bone-pale. Her fingers were clenched tightly over the steering wheel.  
   
"I'm not dead or anything," Charlie pointed out. "And I don't have any weird stuff happening to me. So it's okay, honest."  
   
"Did Smith put you up to this?" she asked and Charlie was so shocked that he could do nothing but gape at her until she said, very sharply, "Did he?!"  
   
"He didn't! He even told me that I shouldn't--"  
   
"So why did you?" she yelled back, finally locating her natural state of ire. Charlie slouched into his seat, the corners of his lips pulled down. "Everyone said, don't do it, and of course you would! You know whose nephew died from touching one of those blasted things, don't you?"  
   
"Mabel Reid's nephew," Charlie repeated, voice dull and low. He had heard his parents talk about that again and again.  
   
"Right, you know. So why would you  _do_  that?" She shook her head as if Charlie had given her a weak reply and she was unwilling to accept it. "You have no idea,  _no idea,_  of what we felt like when we didn't see you that morning. We were all searching for you, did you know that? And then they found you--"  
   
" _Smith_  found me," Charlie said, fighting back tears.  
   
"Smith found you," his mother echoed, and then returned to her rant. "We thought you were in a coma, Charlie. We thought you were going to  _die_."  
   
Charlie was weeping openly now, turning away from her so she wouldn't see, and rubbing at his eyes. He really didn't like making people feel bad, and his mother was feeling really bad right now… and by extension, she was making  _him_  feel  _terrible._  
   
His mother stopped the truck jerkily, and dragged him into a fierce hug. He resisted for a moment, but she was stronger than him and turned him around easily.  
   
"Don't do that again. You hear me, Charlie?" She hugged him very tightly, as if she did not want to let him go, ever again. "Don't you dare pull something dangerous like that, ever again."  
   
Charlie shook his head, a mute promise that he would keep as safe as possible. In the coming years, it would be a promise that he wouldn't be able to keep.  
   
"Okay," his mother said, and took a few deep breaths. With his head resting on her chest, Charlie felt the movement of her inhalations and exhalations. "Okay," she repeated and released him, wiping at her cheeks with both hands before putting the truck into first gear again and driving on. When they got to the garage his father co-owned, they saw him waiting at the front of the small office with his silver lunch-box in hand, already dressed in his street-clothes. A few of the mechanics, some of them still dressed in their oil-stained overalls, called out to Charlie's father, who simply waved his hand to them without looking and went towards the truck as his mother parked near the entrance.  
   
She slid out from behind the wheel, the engine left throttling, and went around the car to the other side. His father took her place, giving Charlie his metal box to hold. Charlie placed the empty container in his lap, and he was comfortably warm all the way home with a parent on each side.  
   
When his father parked in the driveway, Charlie's mom exited first, speaking loudly about the dinner she had to whip up. When he tried to slide out the passenger door as well, he felt one of his father's big hands grip his shoulder. Charlie turned back, resigned to another round of scolding.  
   
His father huffed, and ruffled the fine strands that his mother had so carefully arranged under an hour before. "I guess you got an earful from your mother already."  
   
"Did I  _ever_ ," Charlie said, and sighed. "But I guess I deserve it, maybe."  
   
"'Maybe?' I think the word you're looking for here is 'definitely', Charlie Chap." His mouth moved under the thick blond mustache that used to tickle Charlie so much as a very small child. His dad cleared his throat and said, "I'm glad you're okay, kiddo."  
   
"Me too," Charlie said, very fervently and grinned when his father actually laughed out loud. His father rarely laughed like that, and it sounded a bit odd to Charlie, but he still liked the booming nature of it.  
   
When they got inside, Tiffany came out from the kitchen and hugged him so tight that Charlie felt like he was choking a little, but he endured it. Brad just punched him on the arm and called him a dork, but he said it in the most affectionate tone that Charlie had heard.  
   
Charlie was safely ensconced in the sofa after dinner that evening, with a cup of vanilla ice-cream and a healthy dollop of chocolate syrup. He was half-listening to the sit-com his father was watching, the rest of his mind caught up in thoughts of what Smith would be up to in that moment, when the phone rang and his father got up to answer it.  
   
Charlie focused on his father's half of the conversation only when he heard him say, "He's  _fine_ , Jeph. Nothing's wrong with the kid, so give it rest."  
   
"What was that?" Charlie asked when his father returned to his armchair.  
   
"Nothing," Mr. Parks grumbled and twisted around, trying to find the best spot for the cushion to support his back. "Just some idiots who don't know anything. Ah crap," he said, when the phone rang again.  
   
"I'll get it," Charlie offered, hoping it was one of Tiffany's or Brad's many friends calling for them.  
   
Shaking his head, his father said, "Relax." He got up and ambled over to the doorway of the TV room, and out into the passageway which separated that area from the kitchen and the dining room. The phone was on the wall beside the kitchen door and Charlie tuned his ears in keenly from the moment he heard his father pick up the receiver.  
   
"Hello? Yeah, I'm Dave Parks.... yeah." There the weighty silence of Charlie's father listening to what the person on the other line had to say; it seemed to spread out through the whole lower level of the house. As Charlie spooned the last bit of ice-cream in the house, he wondered if his mother and siblings upstairs had gone this quiet as well. "I have no idea what you're talking about," his father finally said in a low, harsh voice. "He's fine, completely normal and there's  _no way_  I'd let some--"  
   
The volume of Mr. Park's voice dropped abruptly, even though he continued to speak. Charlie put down his cup of ice-cream on the squat table that served as a magazine-holder some of the times, and a foot-rest for Brad when their mother wasn't home. He was torn between staying where he was and creeping closer to hear what his father was muttering, when his dad said, very clearly, "So do me a favour and don't call this house again. We sure as hell don't need some agency messing with our lives."  
   
Charlie blinked as his father stalked back into the TV room and folded his bulky frame back into his armchair, staring the television with a massive frown. Charlie got the impression that his father was not seeing anything on the screen at all.  
   
"Dad?"  
   
His father turned his head slightly, gaze still fixed straight ahead. "Hmm?"  
   
"Who was that last person? That called, I meant."  
   
"Nobody important," his father answered, but his tone was clipped and yet slightly agitated at the same time. "I think you should be in bed about now, Charlie."  
   
"But--"  
   
" _Bed_. Now, Charlie."  
   
Under normal circumstances, Charlie would have whined and complained about how it was the  _summer-time_ , and he  _really_  wanted to watch this show. He'd go on and on until his father relented; now, however, he decided that he wasn't going to give his parents any more grey hair… at least, not more than they were supposed to get, anyway. He got up quite obediently, told his father good night, and went upstairs to brush his teeth after he had washed out his cup in the kitchen.  
   
When he was curled up like a comma under his sheets, he was checked upon numerous times during the night. Tiffany slid in once, incurring Brad's loud and incredulous wrath since he was only half-dressed. She ignored him completely, sitting on the edge of Charlie's bed and asking him if he was alright. Charlie nodded and smiled when she pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, as if she suspected him of having a raging fever.  
   
He woke up a bit later to find his father standing in his room, peering out of the window that was in the middle of the wall against which the little night-table rested. He had the curtains opened a small distance, and stood there, unmoving, for about five minutes.  
   
"Daddy?" Charlie sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. "What's going on?"  
   
"Sleep, kiddo," his dad said. "Nothing's going on."  
   
"…'kay." Charlie snuggled back down, an arm flung around his pillow as if was his old teddy-bear. However, as soon as his father went out of the bedroom, Charlie got up out of bed and squinted through the curtains himself. Strange how his vision was acting all weird, it was blurry with _and_ without the glasses. He hoped he remembered to tell his parents the next day.  
   
Their window looked out over a side-street, since their house was at the corner of two roads. On the opposite side of the road, a black car was idling. As Charlie stared at it, its brake-lights flared blood-red in the night. It made its way to the intersection, and turned down, driving away from Charlie's house at a very slow pace. The windows were tinted so dark that Charlie couldn't see the shape of anyone who might have been inside, not even when the car drove under the harsh orange circles of light cast by the street-lamps. Charlie watched it until it got to the intersection which led to the main road, and he knew that it might pass by Smith's house in a few minutes.  
   
Charlie clambered back into bed, thinking that he was too rattled to even sleep again.  
   
He jerked awake the next morning, blinking at the bright morning sunshine which streamed into the bedroom; Brad had a habit of yanking them wide before he left for the day to go spend time with his group of friends. With the morning so cheerful, Charlie could almost imagine that he had dreamed the black car. He went over to the window and looked out, seeing nothing but the neighbours' lawns, the grass drying out a bit from the persistent heat. This heat would probably build up to another summer-storm, and the grass would get green again, before starting to dry out once more.  
   
Then, Smith turned the corner from the main road, and Charlie forgot all about the black car. He dived away from the window as if Smith could have seen him from that distance, landing on the floor between the beds and crawling, commando-like, to his chest-of-drawers. He pulled out the drawer where his shorts were stuffed into, shimmying out of the pajama pants and yanking on a blue pair with white piping. The shirt could stay, he decided, but by that time he could hear Smith greeting his mother in the kitchen, then the sound of his footsteps pounding up the stairs.  
   
Charlie whirled around his room, his mind going four hundred directions at once. When Smith knocked and pushed open the door directly after, Charlie found himself with his pillow in one hand and a random sock in the other.  
   
Smith gazed at his loot for a long moment, before looking at Charlie with his eyebrows raised. "Gonna have a sock-pillow fight?"  
   
Charlie let out a nervous giggle, and then subsided abruptly. He had no idea what to say to Smith, which was so strange; usually, he'd be chatting off Smith's ear a mile a minute. There were occasions in which Smith begged him to be quiet for fifteen seconds, or even twenty, just so he could hear himself  _think_. Charlie would last all of ten seconds, before he was off to the races again.  
   
Smith bit his lip and came inside the room fully; he had a few boxes tucked under one arm. "So… my mom thought that you might not be able to go outside for awhile--"  
   
"I can't?" Charlie blurted out in surprise and they blinked at each other at the loudness of his voice.  
   
"Well, I don't know. Your mom said you're going to have to rest for a few days."  
   
"I… I feel okay." Charlie placed his pillow back on his bed, and dropped the sock on top of it. "I mean--"  
   
"I could go, if you want," Smith said suddenly, backing up towards the door again. He stopped when Charlie stared at him. "If you want to be alone for a little, I guess."  
   
"No, stay," Charlie said, even though there was a part of him really wanted Smith to leave. It wasn't that he didn't like Smith, far from that; he didn't think there was anyone he liked  _more_  than Smith. But he just felt a lot confused right now, and having Smith so close wasn't helping matters at all.  
   
A look of doubt crossed Smith's face. Charlie gave him a smile that felt so shaky on his lips, and then jerked his chin at the boxes that Smith was carrying. "What's that?"  
   
"Oh, just a few games." Smith knelt down on the worn rug and stacked them, pulling open the first one. He looked up at Charlie, and one corner of his mouth twitched. Charlie toed the ground floor shyly, and then knelt down beside Smith after a few moments. Without a word, Smith handed him the little car-piece from the first game and Charlie grinned.  
   
He felt less awkward after a few rounds, smiling and laughing with Smith; he even cheated in a rather obvious manner, causing Smith to mock-yell at him. By that evening, he had managed to put aside that fluttery sensation which occurred in his stomach every time Smith looked at him or smiled at him, and they were almost back to normal. However, when Smith busied himself with packing up his games, he said, "Charlie. I'm really glad you're okay," and the butterflies ended up in Charlie's stomach again.  
   
He ate all the spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, hoping his blush didn't show too much when his mother asked if he and Smith had fun today.  
   
"It was okay," he mumbled through his pasta. "Can I go out with Smith tomorrow?"  
   
"No," both his parents said, and exchanged a strange long look. Tiffany and Charlie stared at them and then glanced at each other. Even Brad frowned.  
   
"Why not?" he asked. "He looks fine. See, he's eating like a horse."  
   
"Yeah!" Charlie cheerfully slurped a long tail of spaghetti. "I feel great."  
   
"You were  _unconscious_  yesterday," his mother reminded him, and doled out an unnecessary amount of lettuce. Charlie eyed it with great doubt, but ate it when his mother gave him a very solid glare. "I don't think it's good for you as yet, mister."  
   
" _Mom_ ," Charlie whined, and nibbled on his greens. "I'm really fine! And Smith will make sure I'm okay, promise!"  
   
"Smith is just a kid, like you," his father rumbled. "If anything happened--"  
   
"What could happen?" Tiffany wondered and then gave Charlie a quick smile. Stunned at his sister's defense, Charlie grinned in return. "And… I mean, you know Charlie. You tell him to stay inside--"  
   
"Maybe we could lock him in the basement," Mr. Parks pondered, and wrinkled his nose as Charlie spluttered. Charlie tried to make his eyes very large and hopeful, cheering internally when his father let out a short, resigned breath.  
   
"Okay, Charlie," his mother translated for him. "Charlie, if anyone strange tries to talk to you or get you to go with them,  _do not go._  You hear?"  
   
"Yeah?" Charlie was a little confused; he'd heard all this stranger danger stuff before. "Okay."  
   
"I'll tell Smith, too," she decided, and when Smith showed up bright and early the next morning, she did just that.  
   
Charlie was already dressed, hopping from one foot as his mother went all over the rules with Smith as they stood on the patio. He tried to make  _come-on-hurry-up_  faces at his friend behind his mother's back, but Smith spared him a quick glance, amusement and concern warring for dominance in his dark eyes. He went back to looking at Charlie's mom, nodding now and again with his gaze fixed on her face, lips pulled into a serious, thin line. Even Turbo appeared sombre, sitting at close heel to Smith and tilting back his shaggy little head so he could concentrate on Mrs. Parks' lecture.  
   
"Okay, Mrs. Parks," Smith said when she was finally through, and had folded her arms across her chest. "I won't let anything happen to him."  
   
"I'm the same age as him, I'm not a baby!" Charlie completely undermined that declaration by wrapping his arms around his mother's waist and giving her a quick hug. "Okay, can we go now?" He smiled up at her and she brushed his hair from his face. That line between her eyebrows had gone deeper and she looked kind of sad all of a sudden. Charlie squeezed her again, and then darted around her to seize Smith's hand and drag him away.  
   
"Bye!" he called out as they mounted their wheels, Smith on his skateboard and Charlie on his bike, riding off to the wide open possibility of the day; and boy, was it  _ever_ a great-looking day. The sky was that perfect shade of blue, that breathless colour which claimed that it would never end, that this was the summer that they'd remain twelve years old; the air was warm, but not too stifling, and Charlie cut through it like an airplane. He felt that if he looked back, he'd see the thin cloudy line of a contrail leading from his back tire. Smith laughed out loud as Turbo raced beside them, his short legs pumping furiously to keep up.  
   
Charlie laughed too, because Smith was laughing and he couldn't help being happy. He was a kid with his best friend at the best time of year, and it couldn't get much better than this.  
   
They went to their secret clubhouse by their perfect, tiny lake. It looked cosy and awesome, as it always did when he came here with Smith. It didn't have that brooding feeling it had on  _that_  night, and they spent hours puttering about, moving objects around quite unnecessarily and shoving them right back into place.  
   
"Let's go get something to drink," Charlie suggested a little after mid-day, and Smith agreed. They climbed up to the main road, and when they rolled by where Charlie had been found, Smith simply jerked his chin in the direction of the slope and Charlie nodded. To complete this particular wordless sentence, Turbo yipped and they kept on trucking.  
   
They were leaning against the wall of the corner-store with their large cups in hand, right next to the display-case for the daily newspapers, when trouble thundered up in the form of a Shelby Mustang, patches of the body still rough from on-going paint-work. A few older boys slid out, sharp in their large sunglasses. Charlie sipped contemplatively on his drink, and the screech of  "Charlie Parks!" caused him to sip too hard, half-choking on the sweet, icy liquid.  
   
"Ah crap," Smith said. They both watched Marcus Baker wriggle out of the back-seat of the Mustang, his broad face awash with unholy glee. One of the older boys glanced back before he went into the store with his friends; Charlie noticed the familial resemblance in the wavy dark blond hair and the wide blue eyes, but that was all he got to see before he was borne down to the hard pavement by Marcus' sudden tackle.  
   
"Quit it!" he heard Smith bellow, Turbo's barks a sharp punctuation to his voice, and Marcus' loud laughter filled his ear. Charlie tried to get up, but Marcus simply sat on him and ruffled his hair almost affectionately. Charlie could barely breathe; he writhed and bucked, but Marcus was too heavy to throw off  
   
"Hey, freak," Marcus said, shoving Smith away when he tried to pull Marcus away. "Heard you got hit by some space-rock, Chalk-face." He tilted his head and smiled so that all of his teeth were fully displayed. They were really white, Charlie noted even as he struggled. It was really funny how someone as mean as Marcus had really great teeth. "Thought you could get some powers or something?"  
   
"Leave me alone!" Charlie wondered why people like Marcus were so  _mean_. Did they go to mean school to hone their skills?  
   
"Where's your powers? Huh? Huh, Chalkie Parks, how comes you didn't get any powers?" Marcus chortled and then reached down to deliver a walloping great donkey-bite to Charlie's arm. Charlie yelled, but it was one made mostly of confusion, because that huge pinch, which usually reduced him to tears, didn't hurt at all.  
   
"It's cause you're just a dork," Marcus informed him.  
   
"Hey!" Smith yelled, pitched so high that it was nearly a scream. He was standing beside Marcus, tugging at his strong arm and Marcus glanced up, apparently to sneer at him; suddenly, he flinched. He slapped a hand over his left eye and let out a howl of sheer agony before rolling off Charlie and onto the concrete pavement, writhing in pain. Charlie stared at his gyrations and then turned his head to look at Smith.  
   
Smith was standing there with his eyes narrowed, hands fisted at his sides. He was  _strafing_  Marcus with his mind, and Charlie was torn between fear and excitement.  
   
"Hey!" Someone bellowed from the door of the convenience store, an eerie echo of what Smith said just a few moments ago. "Hey, leave Marcus alone!"  
   
Charlie realized the older boys who had gone in were now pounding towards them. He got to his feet with an astounding amount of sprightliness, and stood there for just a moment, seeing the tableau that Marcus' older brother no doubt was taking in: Marcus on the ground, screeching in pain, his eyes bulging while two younger boys stood rightover him.  
   
Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie saw the cool boys bear down on their position, arms raised. He didn't think; he just darted in front of Smith and a strange sensation rippled over his skin. Something struck him in the back of his neck and he rocked on his heels, but there was no pain at all. Well… not for him. The older kid who had hit him was now kneeling on the ground, holding one wrist in the other hand and staring at the crumpled bone and torn skin.  
   
Turbo sat on his haunches and  _howled._  
   
"Charlie," Smith whispered, and Charlie looked down at himself. The skin of his arms, already unfortunately pale, had turned bone-white, and there was an oddly glittering sheen over the surface. "Charlie, what--"  
   
Another of Marcus' brother's friends grabbed Charlie's shoulder. Charlie put out a hand, placed it flat on his chest and  _shoved_ ; the boy was propelled through the air and crashed right into the plate glass of the store, shattering it.  
   
Charlie stared at him, and then looked down at his splayed, transformed fingers in utter shock.  
   
"What the fuck!" Marcus' brother was trying to drag him away by his arms, even though he was still moaning in pain. "Freaks! I'm gonna call those agents on you! Just you wait!"  
   
Charlie heard his threats only very distantly, because he was holding up his hands and gaping at the strange quality the skin had gained. He rubbed one finger over the wrist of the other hand; it felt thick and rough.  
   
"Charlie, come on!" Smith grabbed his skateboard and flung it to the ground, hopping on and looking over his shoulder to make sure Charlie was following; he was, pedaling so hard that he nearly drove into a car that was turning into the parking lot. The acrid smell of burnt rubber seemed to burn a path through Charlie's nostrils as he swerved around it; the driver let out a cry that wavered around the edges of Charlie's hearing, but his legs were pumping hard as he raced beside Smith and Turbo.  
   
They didn't have to tell each other that their place of safety was their secret clubhouse. If Marcus and those other boys jumped into their car and sped off in their wake, they'd have to do so in the next two minutes, for in that time, Charlie and Smith were already on the road to their place, tumbling off their rides and dragging them into the leafy slope near the embankment, before scrambling down the rest of the way.  
   
They dashed into small structure as if a pack of wild beasts were snapping at their ankles, and slammed the door; Smith had to lift it a bit so that it would fit securely in the warped frame, and they both leaned against it, drawing in deep breaths of slightly dusty air. Charlie patted his pockets automatically for his inhaler and it was only  _after_  he took two puffs that he realized he had not needed it at all. Turbo headed right for a crate that was propped up against a wall, and hid underneath it, whining faintly.  
   
Charlie jumped when Smith seized his hands and looked closely at the skin on the backs of his hands.  
   
"Normal now," Smith muttered and turned them over to inspect Charlie's palms, like that weird psychic lady at the carnival last year. She hadn't predicted anything like this at all, and Charlie wondered if he should hunt her down this year and demand his money back.  
   
"Charlie," Smith said and squeezed his hands; his eyes were wide and his face had that old look again. "Charlie, you..." He took a deep breath and let the rest of the sentence just die.  
   
"I got," Charlie said in much the same manner, and clenched at Smith's fingers. "Smith, I got... I'm like  _you._ "  
   
Smith pulled his hands free, then wiped one of them across his mouth. His fingers had taken up an obvious tremble. "Your skin just changed, Charlie. I saw. It went all…  _weird._ "  
   
"I know!" Charlie clenched his fists and glared at them, trying to get that hard, shimmering effect again. He furrowed his brow and stared until it felt like his eyes were going to fall out of his head, but nothing happened. "I can't get it to go again!"  
   
Smith snatched his hands by the wrists again and squeezed, hard. Surprised, Charlie looked up and blinked at the very dark expression on Smith's face.  
   
"Don't try to do it again," Smith said, and his voice sounded very low and faint. "Don't force it. You could hurt yourself or something."  
   
Charlie stared up in his face, which was strained at the edges. Smith released his wrists and then put his arms around Charlie's shoulders, pulling him into a hug so tight that Charlie couldn't breathe for a moment. The insides of his arms were hot against the skin of Charlie's neck, and he smelled sweaty and a little like fresh earth. From the shadows, Turbo whimpered.  
   
Charlie took a deep breath and squeezed him back, tight as anything.  
   
"I have powers now, Smith," he whispered. "I won't let anything hurt you, not ever. Not _ever_."  
   
Smith's body shook as he let out some strangled chuckles and he pulled back, arming away sweat from his face…at least, that's what it looked like to Charlie. His hands were on Charlie's shoulders now, and his fingers felt so hot through Charlie's thin cotton t-shirt.  
   
He opened his mouth and then closed it again. "Let's go home, Charlie," he said, but Charlie had a feeling that this was not what he meant to say.  
   
The day was edging towards dusk as they made their way home; Smith had his skateboard tucked under his arm, and Charlie was wheeling his bike instead of riding on it. No cars passed them on the brush-bracketed road, and when they turned onto Pine Avenue, full night trembled on the brink of falling.  
   
"Tomorrow?" Smith asked, stopping next the mailbox beside the drive-way of his house. "I got a basketball yesterday, we can try that if you want."  
   
Charlie didn't know the first thing about basketball, but he grinned widely. "Sure!"  
   
Smith's smile was just as broad. "Okay, Charlie. And don't try forcing that power, okay? I'll…I'll talk to my mom about it, maybe we can help."  
   
"We could be a _team_!" Charlie did a little dance on the pavement, and Turbo hopped around on his back legs, yipping happily. "I'll think of a name, Smith!"  
   
"Okay, Charlie. Come on, Turbo." Smith meandered up the walkway with his dog, looking over his shoulder to throw a quick grin. Charlie waved exuberantly and got on his bicycle, pedaling home.  
   
In his driveway, there was a black car. His parents were standing on the front porch, yelling at two people dressed in dark uniforms. Charlie hovered near his mailbox, and the strange persons turned to look at him as one.  
   
"That's him," a tall man said; Charlie let his bicycle fall to the blacktop and backed away.  
   
"Run, Charlie!" his mother screamed at him and tried to fight her way through the people congregated in front of the door. "Run!"  
   
Charlie felt as if he couldn't move for a minute; his mother's face was contorted, and it was scary. It was like a bad dream; a back door of the black car, the one closest to him, opened leisurely, and another strange man climbed out. His face was studded with long spikes, and his eyes were tiny and set close together. Charlie stumbled back, fell on his bottom and tried to push away with his feet.  
   
He heard his father shouting hoarsely, and cried out when the spiked-face man reached down and grabbed him by the arm; the hold wasn't painful…it was oddly gentle in fact, but Charlie had gone limp with terror.  
   
"Come, little one," the man said, and lifted Charlie up in his arms. "It will be all right."  
   
"You let him go, that's our _son_ , you can't--"  
   
"He belongs to the Authority now," a young woman said, and she was _floating_ from where she had been standing next to Charlie's parents. Charlie, seated in the crook of the spiky man's arm, simultaneously cringed back and stared in amazement as she hovered next to them. Her eyes reminded him of Smith's: childish, but so very ancient at the same time. At this distance, with her long black hair fluttering about her plump face, she was far younger than she had appeared at first.  
   
"You can't take care of him," she continued, and tapped two fingers of her left hand on Charlie's chin. "He's special. He needs care…and training."  
   
Charlie felt tears streaming down his face; the woman's smile was knife-sharp, and yet pitying. Brad was now at the door with Tiffany, his expression thunderous. He stomped down the stairs, but the woman turned and pointed at him. Brad froze in his steps, a grimace painted painfully all over his face. Likewise, the other members of his family had stopped shouting, and simply stood there, their eyes wide and pleading.  
   
"You see?" The floating woman turned to him and tilted her head. "Charlie Parks, they cannot understand you anymore. You're different now. A _hero_."  
   
Charlie swallowed hard, still crying silently. He felt like he couldn't move as the spiked man opened the door of the car and climbed in, setting Charlie on the padded seat beside him. Charlie pulled his legs in, curled himself into as small a shape as possible, and shivered as the doors slammed. The spiked man patted his shoulder comfortingly.  
   
The driver of the black car, the tall man who was paler than Charlie with hair twice as fair, sat behind the wheel and started the car. The floating woman sat beside him, the normalcy of the action juxtaposing her abilities. The man with the spikes gave Charlie's shoulder a quick squeeze as they backed out and began to drive down the road.  
   
"Wait," the woman said, and the car braked abruptly. She stared out her window for a very long time and Charlie risked peering past the man with the spikes. He felt a jolt run down his back, shaking him a little out of the shock he seemed to have gone into.  
   
She was looking at Smith's house.  
   
"What is it?" The driver asked in a thickly accented voice and the woman shook her head slowly. Charlie saw the curtains of the front window twitch slightly.  
   
"I thought I felt something," the woman answered in a distant, dreamy manner. "But I was wrong." She turned in her seat, gazing out the windshield for a few beats before looking over her shoulder at Charlie. He felt his bottom lip tremble, and he looked down as tears blurred his vision.  
   
"Stellar," he heard her murmur and he squeezed his eyes shut.  
 

  _...those who can't, fix it._  


## iii. Smith Shephard

  
Smith didn't flinch when Quentin kicked open the door to the room they shared and said, in his crisp accent, "Now then, fucker, let's be off."  
   
"Applied Physics tomorrow," Smith said, frowning at his notes. "Seriously, if I don't study, I'm going to fail."  
   
"Hint, old boy," Quentin teased, his mouth right at Smith's ear; again, Smith wouldn't give him the pleasure of shying away. "You've let it run a bit late. You're _going_ to fail, sorry to say."  
   
"Well, fuck." Smith glowered at his notes and sighed heavily. As much as he hated to admit it, Quentin was right. This final _was_ pretty much guaranteed that he was going to fail this exam. Not for the first time, Smith wondered what he was really doing. He didn't want to be a doctor, like his dad, but he had no idea what he wanted to do.  
   
No idea.  
   
"Come on." Quentin had managed to perch himself on one corner of Smith's table, and placed one sandaled foot on Smith's chair, toes wriggling under Smith's thigh. Smith eyed the way Quentin had inadvertently shifted a pile of books, setting the whole thing askew. He reached out and poked at the spines of his text-books again, "There's this show--"  
   
"Tin, seriously, I need to--"  
   
"--and we've a gig, and if you don't come watch us play, Smithy, I will make you hate yourself. I promise you this, mate."  
   
Smith glared up Quentin, with his small, mischievous dark eyes and the requisite long rocker hair, black and seemingly perennially unwashed, from its dishevelled appearance. Quentin waggled his eyebrows, and wriggled around to some beat that Smith couldn't hear. Quentin _would_ find great fun in annoying Smith until he snapped, Smith had had nearly two years experience with _that_ , and so the least crazy-inducing choice would be to give in.  
   
He didn't have to be gracious about it, though. He shoved back his seat so that Quentin lost his balanced and nearly toppled to the floor, squawking about how Smith was a _complete prat_. Smith got to his feet, smirking down at his room-mate.  
   
"Ready?" he asked, and Quentin's eyes narrowed. Smith laughed, and helped him up.  
   
The small house they shared with four other students was near the edge of the college town. Smith walked some way in companionable silence with his lanky room-mate, taking short-cuts through alleys until they ended up near the Chunky, queues of young people lined up in front of the narrow building. Quentin sailed past them, accepting the loud greetings with his trademark smirk, or a naughty wink. Smith followed in his wake, his curls falling into his eyes as he kept his head down and shoulders hunched against the cool of the night. He should have put on something over his thin t-shirt, but it had been relatively warm in the house. He bumped into a few people who closed ranks after Quentin passed.  
   
"Oi, let me mate pass, 'e's with me," Quentin yelled back over his shoulder, his accent deepening as it always did when he was around crowds. His _'with'_ came out as _'wif'_ , and Smith shook his head as they were let in past the bouncers.  
   
"Hey, Davie," Smith said to one of them, a dude who took some classes with him. Davie, tall and yet very unassuming, armed some sweat from his forehead and nodded in return.  
   
A band was already going through their set on the tiny stage, but the rest of the Chunky was packed to bursting. Smith eyed the windows that were set too high for his tastes, and wrinkled his nose at a discordant note that scraped its way through the air. He felt a strong grasp on his wrist, and was pulled around behind the bar. The bartender nodded when Quentin made some obscure signal over his head which meant that their drinks should be placed on a tab, and then Quentin hauled him towards a darkened corridor.  
   
"No, man, I'll just wait out here." Smith tried to tug away, but Quentin's grip was firm. He glanced over his shoulder at Smith, giving him that lopsided grin. Smith tamped down on his annoyance, holding his ability back. Quentin was mostly harmless; he liked to tease Smith, and leave fleeting touches against the back of his neck... or deal sly pinches to Smith's ass.  
   
Smith pulled again, and this time Quentin released him. They stood there facing each other in the small passage that led around to the back of the stage. There was a quick gleam, a flash of Quentin's teeth, as if he knew Smith didn't want to go into the minuscule room where the band was probably smoking hard and drinking harder. On top of that, Smith and the lead singer never got along too well.  
   
"See you after the show, then?" Quentin's tone was very low yet warm.  
   
"Sure." Smith smiled and sketched a friendly salute. Quentin must have winked at him, Smith could feel the force of his audacity, before he sauntered off to meet with the rest of his band.  
   
Smith found himself a recess between the bar and the corridor, tucked firmly in until Quentin's band, Live With A Friend, came on. Quentin played bass, not very badly, but he could do better. He got by mainly on the dirty promises in the gazes he bestowed on the crowd.  
   
Smith was on his fourth drink by the time Live With A Friend finally came on, and a soft buzz was already coiling in the vicinity his temples. He was in the middle of ordering another (and telling himself that this was the last one), when he smelled the smoke.  
   
"What's that smell?" he said to the bartender as she gave him his order. She tilted her head, and then shook it. "Smoke! I smell--"  
   
A scream ripped through the air, leaving it tattered. Before Smith could figure out which direction it was coming from, another joined it. The press of the crowd suddenly switched directions from that of the stage towards the single door. Smith heard frantic noises, bottles being smashed on the floor during desperate escape. Smith _saw_ the smoke now, billows of it rising from beneath the stage. He tried to push his way forward, gaze searching the stampeding crowd for Quentin. He reached down to help a man who was being trampled, pulling him out of the way while he wished he had a more useful ability. Someone's heavy booted foot caught him in the jaw and he reeled back from the pain, losing his grip on the person he was trying to help.  
   
"I'm here!" Quentin's arms were around him in a second, dragging him back towards the wall. Smith spun around, grabbing his shoulders.  
   
"Are you okay?" He yelled in Quentin's face. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the yellow-orange flickers of rising flame. Quentin nodded; there was a strange intensity in his expression, and he held Smith firmly when he tried to twist away and reclaim his grip on the man.  
   
"Let go!" Smith yanked away, and managed to complete his rescue this time. The air had become incredibly hot, and people were screaming very loudly. Smith shoved the injured man behind him, and stood in front to gaze at the throng trying to flee from the fire, unsuccessfully. They were piled up against the doors, trying to push, but there was no give.

"Pull!" Smith yelled at them, but they didn't hear him, scrambling over each other. "You have to _pull_ the door, not push!" He could hear the crackles of the fire growing louder and he tried hard to slow down his panicked breathing. Coughing, his eyes watering, Smith slid down the wall, trying to get away from the billows of smoke. He tilted his head back and stared up at the windows, too far up, and glanced at Quentin again, feeling helpless. Even the corridor that led to the stage was a dead-end.  
   
To his surprise, Quentin appeared calm, almost anticipatory. Smith blinked, and then flinched as a section of wall right above his head was ripped away. He looked up again to see someone with long white hair poking their head through the jagged space that was created. Fresh air poured into the burning bar, and the flames leapt higher.  
   
A Hero was here.  
   
"Step back!" the Hero yelled down at them. "Step the fuck _back_!"  
   
Immediately, those beneath that area scampered away as best as they could manage; just in time, too, for the entire wall was reduced to rubble in a moment.

"Come on." Smith grabbed onto the man he had assisted, helping him over the fallen bricks. There were at least two Heroes: one that flew in, a streak of white, and another that leaped over the heads of the fleeing crowd, snatching up a few of the weakened patrons and leaping out again. Smith made his way across the road, handing over his charge to a waiting EMT. About four ambulances were parked askew, the lights strobing fitfully. Smith leaned against the cold wall of the building opposite to the burning bar, and Quentin stood beside him; they both watched the Heroes do their saving bit.  
   
Smith only had eyes for the one that flew; the one with the long pale hair that whipped in the air as they sped back and forth.  
   
"Stellar," he whispered. _Charlie_.  
   
"Stellar once," Quentin said, far quieter than Smith had ever heard. That was strange, for Quentin was the kind of person who seemed to take up more space than one person was allowed, in both mass and noise, and it was one of the things Smith liked about him. Quentin continued: "Now he's Celestial."  
   
"Oh, yeah." Smith bit at his lip, barely hearing the relieved sobs of the rescued patrons. When Celestial flew out cradling a woman, apparently the last of those who had been trapped, he landed and tried to set her upright so she could walk on her own, but she refused to let her feet touch the ground. She tightened her grip around his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist, shuddering. Celestial's mouth was a sharp slash in his pale face, and he peeled the woman from himself, holding her away until an EMT scuttled over and grabbed her.  
   
"Since he got the ability to fly," Quentin said, but Smith already knew that.  
   
In a sturdy box underneath his bed, which served as a drawer, Smith kept a plain manila folder with newspaper articles clearly cut out. Stellar's incredible strength and his impervious skin were a great asset to the Authority's operations. Bullets bounced away, knifes bent or broke went jabbed against his skin; there was one memorable occasion where a criminal was killed by a bullet ricocheting off Stellar. A year ago, maybe a few months more than that, Stellar developed the power of flight, and had changed his Hero code-name to Celestial.  
   
Even though there were photos in Smith's clippings, they didn't do justice to how different Celestial appeared from the boy Smith had known. He was taller than Smith's average height now, by a good head or so, and he seemed paler than ever. The fine blond hair had darkened by a half-step in tone. The thick glasses and the round face was gone, given way to a leaner countenance, and although his eyes were the same light shade, and tilted up at the corners in that way Smith remembered well, there was no smile in them at all.  
   
Smith wondered what would happen if he called out, _Charlie!_ He nearly did it, parting his lips to let the familiar name slide past his lips, when he felt Quentin's hand slide through the crook of his arm.  
   
"Let's go home," Quentin said, and when Smith looked at him, his expression had that faraway cast to it. Something cold and heavy seemed to settle in the pit of Smith's stomach, and he allowed himself to be pulled away. He didn't look back at the rescue scene at all.  
   
They were barely on the creaking patio of the house, when the front door was pushed open and one of their house-mates, Jess, stood there with her perennial frown on her small face. However, the scowl didn't appear as disgruntled as it should have.  
   
"Smith," she said, tucking her short black hair behind one ear. "Your dad called."  
   
The heavy sensation in Smith's stomach intensified and without meaning to, he took a deep breath. Quentin's touch was heavy and surprisingly comforting on his arm. His father didn't call him; that was his mom's jealously guarded duty, every weekend, and she would give the telephone to his father to speak.  
   
"Smith," his father said when he called. "Smith. Smith."  
   
"Dad?" Smith sat on the sunken sofa in the living room, clutching the phone with both hands. The line crackled, but that definitely wasn't the reason for the hollow tone of his father's voice. "Dad, what's wrong?"  
   
"Your mother and your sister," was all his father could say and to Smith's increasing alarm, he began to weep.  
   
*  
   
Granville wasn't a very large town, by anyone's standards. However, a double funeral was kind of a big deal, especially since the recently deceased were the wife and daughter of one of the town's doctors. Smith sat next to his father during the service, staring at the two highly polished caskets, bright flowers nestled on top. He could see the warped reflection of his own face in the side of the closest one, barely making out the white of his crisp white shirt, buried underneath his black jacket. His suit was very simple, but according to Quentin it fit him perfectly. Smith hadn't been able to manage more than a weak smile at Quentin's attempt at a leer.  
   
Smith helped carry out his sister's coffin, and kept an eye on his dad at the same time as they placed them in the hearses and drove to the cemetery. His dad appeared sunken-in, as if all the substantial portions had been scooped out and discarded. His smooth skin had lost some of that rich hue that Smith had inherited, and seemed to have gained a layer of gray over the sharp features.   
   
"Smith," someone said to him after the burial, standing at his elbow while he stared down at the freshly filled graves. His father was standing some distance away, nodding as a few of his colleagues spoke with him. Smith turned his head, frowning slightly at the woman who was looking up at him from behind a very large pair of shades. She was wearing a simple black dress, and a wide hat. "Hello, Smith."  
   
Smith nodded, a sharp twitch, before he returned his gaze to the heaped dirt. It smelled rich, and very comforting for some reason. His mother was underneath there. His tall, solemn, intelligent mother... and his sister who scared him at a level he didn't care to explore.  
   
The woman who had greeted him did not move from beside him and there seemed to be a heavy weight on one of his shoulders, the one closest to her. Smith looked in her direction out of the corner of his eye, and felt his eyebrows furrow again at the continuation of her presence.  
   
"Smith, my name is Anna Chong." She was short, enough so that she had to tilt her head back a little to look him in the eye, and Smith wasn't particularly tall these days. "Your mother was...a very _strong_ person."  
   
Smith lifted his chin and turned to face her fully. She nodded as if he had passed some test of hers, even as he loomed over her smaller frame.  
   
"You know nothing about my mother," Smith said in a low, warning tone. "So take my advice and shut up about her. Or go away. Any of those is fine for me."  
   
Anna Chong arched one dark eyebrow, and then lifted a hand to tap at her sharp chin. _Elfin_ , Smith thought. That was the proper word to describe her delicacy; the dark shades set against the soft cream of her skin emphasized it even more.  
   
"I know a good deal about Rosa Shephard, _nee_ Ramirez. I'm aware that she was one of the few psis at that level, and she refused to work for the Authority," she told Smith, voice prim even as she put a finger to the bridge of her glasses and pulled them down a little so that she could peer over the top at him. One of her eyes appeared normal, wide with a dark-brown pupil; a lovely left eye. The right was completely obscured by a milky film, and seemed to roll off in a direction independently of its normal twin. Smith did not recoil through sheer force of will, but her eyebrows arched in what seemed to be a sly manner.  
   
"Your mother," she continued, pushing her glasses back into place, "went to great lengths to make sure you weren't discovered by the Authority."  
   
Smith kept staring at her even as she turned back to face the graves; he had no idea what she was talking about.  
   
"We just couldn't find you. We knew you existed, we knew you were some kind of a psi, but we just couldn't lock onto you." Her tone had dropped, almost too low for Smith to hear over the conversational mutters around him, and the private whisper of the wind in the trees. "Sometimes our finders were sent back with severely confused minds. A temporary state, but _still_...Do you know what it takes to make a finder _forget_ , Smith?"  
   
Smith didn't really have an exact number for that, but he thought he had an idea. A memory from his childhood surfaced in his mind's eye, so clear that he could almost smell the perfume his mother wore. He swallowed hard; it was the memory of the day Charlie had been taken away by the Authority. He remembered standing inside his house, hovering in the archway between the kitchen and the dining room. He had wanted to pee, he could recall that, but even with his bladder screaming at him, he watched his mother standing at the front entry, her arms folded across her chest as she stared down the wood of the closed door.  
   
The air had wavered around his mother, like it did over a road on a hot summer day. She appeared insubstantial for a moment, a flickering mirage in the stillness of the house. In a moment, she seemed to _come back_ , and turned her head to look at Smith.  
   
"Can't you save him?" Smith had said, his voice tiny as it crept out of his throat. His mother was really strong. She could do stuff his dad couldn't do. " _Please_ , Mommy?"  
   
"I'm sorry, honey," she'd answered, sadness written all over her face. Smith had felt tears prickle in his eyes, before trailing down his cheeks. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't take him back. Too many people know about him now."  
   
She had glanced up the stairs, and frowned. Smith had scrambled up those same stairs to pee; when he had finished, he'd sat on the bathroom rug with his back against the cool side of the bath-tub. He had pulled his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them as if he could hold in that empty space that seemed to grow too fast for him to handle.  
   
Anna Chong's voice broke through his recollections with a harshly sweet clarity, like a bell against glass. "Even at a distance, even at your university, she tried to shield you from us." Her smile was tilted to one side as she waited for Smith to refocus on her. "If we got you the same time we got Stellar, you would have been--"  
   
"--owned by the Authority." Smith shook his head at her, slowly. His mother had told him all about her time growing up at the Academy for the Gifted, and he was dismayed to think about Charlie going through that unforgiving training. Tiny, delicate Charlie. His mother had tried to assuage his fears by saying the Academy _might_ have changed their Hero educational system, but the doubt in her voice didn't help at all.  
   
Smith shook his head again. "Thanks, but no thanks. I have no intentions of getting myself underneath their thumb, okay?"  
   
He turned around in what he hoped was a dismissive manner, and his breath caught in his throat. Across the cemetery, near to one of those unfortunately-named roads that traversed the neat grid of burial plots, four darkly tinted cars were parked underneath a stand of trees. A group of people stood near the cars, and one was standing slightly apart from the rest.  
   
Charlie was gazing right at Smith, the years stacking between them. _Celestial_ , once _Stellar_ , but always _Charlie_ to Smith. Always.  
   
Charlie, out of his Hero uniform with a dark trench-coat draped over a suit as plain as Smith's, gave him a slow nod. His hair was pulled away from the now sharp lines of his face, apparently caught up at the nape of his neck in a bright, long queue. They stared at each other for a long time, over the quiet company of the dead, while Smith assessed all the changes he had noted from his magazine clippings. He couldn't get over Charlie's height and apparent strength now, all lean muscle; as kids, a stiff wind would topple Charlie over. To see this tall, toned man caused a strange coiling low in Smith's belly.

Smith felt the corner of his mouth twitch, the beginnings of a smile. This faded when another man stepped from behind Charlie. Smith blinked at Quentin's contrite expression; he felt his forehead furrow in dismay and confusion. Quentin lifted one shoulder in a half-apologetic, half-defiant shrug.

"Your mother  _tried_ ," Anna said, and Smith flinched away from her sudden proximity, but he didn't look away from Charlie and Quentin. "But she was getting weaker. Our Quentin isn't as strong a psi as she was...but he's such a sneaky thing. As soon as he got a lock on you, we asked him to keep close."

"What?" Smith hated how lost he sounded. Charlie took a single step forward, and was stopped by Quentin's hand on his arm.

"Do you really think the Authority would let someone with your abilities to just slip away?" Anna asked, and her tone was almost kind. "Think of the good you could do, working for us."

"My mother was getting weaker?" Smith found it hard to tear his gaze away from Charlie's face, but he managed to do so, catching sight of Anna's inscrutable smile.

"Your sister," she said, plainly. "While your mother was protecting you from us, she was shielding everyone else from your sister."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Smith insisted, even though he  _did_. 

"You do," Anna said, and belatedly, Smith wondered what her abilities were. It was quite likely she was a psi, like himself and his mother. How stupidly distracted of him to not put up his mental walls, and he did so quickly. Anna actually scowled at him, and narrowed her eyes.

"Smith." Her tone sharpened, as if she was reading the end of her patience. "You must remember what Shanice was like."

Of course Smith remembered; Shanice's teasing had had a malevolent edge to it that was weirdly innocent, like a child torturing an ant. She would gaze at him with her large dark eyes any time she hurt him, as if she was trying to figure out  _why_ he would be crying so hard. After he had lashed out and hurt Shanice so badly, he'd thought his parents had withdrawn a little from him because of that. It was only in his late teenage years, when he was preparing to head off to university, that his mother had hesitantly explained: guilt. 

"We have people in the Authority," Anna was saying, and Smith pushed away the memory of his mother's face again, "people who can see _probabilities_. Not the future, mind you, but what _one_ future might be. If Shanice had developed normally, she would have been a very large problem for us. As it was, your mother took all the strain of keeping her in." Anna hunched her shoulders almost all the way up to her ears, and quickly let them fall again. "She should have come back to us, near the end. We could have helped her with your sister. No matter what, she was still one of us."

"What do you mean, 'near the end'?" Smith asked and was rewarded by a long, quizzical stare. Her expression cleared after a few moments.

"Oh, you're psi- _kappa_ , and not psi- _gamma_ ," Anna muttered and then did that hard, quick shrug again when Smith wrinkled his nose. "Not a _receiving_ psi, like Quentin and me. A  _doing_ psi _._ You transmit in some way, right?" she tried, and Smith nodded hesitantly. Anna had probably picked up some kind of detail about his ability from his mind, anyway. "So you wouldn't know what happened. All the psi-gammas felt it, this... _struggle._ "

"What happened," Smith whispered, but his imagination, highly active even in the calmest of times, was already creating a mental movie. His mother, standing outside his sister's door, trying to contain Shanice's formidable power, cultivated for years even though Smith had blown out the connections in that part of her brain which controlled most voluntary movement. His mother, trying to stretch herself to shield Smith so far away; his mother--

"We felt it, and we came," Anna said. "It was too late for Rosa."

Smith nodded, feeling cold and hollow and lost. Then, his mind made a few connections, and he looked at Anna closely.

"Too late for my mom. But...." Smith stared at the grave which covered the coffin in which his sister's body supposedly lay and then glared at Anna. "You have my sister."

Anna did not nod, but kept her face turned towards him in an expectant manner. One part of Smith actually admired her coolness, in a abstract, distant manner.

"You  _have my sister_ ," he repeated in shock. "And you let my dad think--"

"It's better this way," Anna snapped. "You _don't know_ what Shanice is capable of. At the Authority, we can monitor her constantly. And don't tell me that you could have handled her," she warned as Smith opened his mouth. He closed it again, and they stared each other down. "You're nowhere near as strong as your mother was, few psis are. Trust me, let the Authority do what it does best."

"Taking people away from their families?" Smith wondered bitterly, and one side of Anna's mouth twisted. "Forcing them to serve and protect?"

"Our world needs the Heroes," Anna said with a heavy conviction and Smith actually laughed, a mocking sound. A few of the remaining mourners looked at him; his father called his name, but Smith shook his head, wanting to negate everything.

"Not me. I'm no Hero. You say I don't know what Shanice can do, and you're probably right. But, me?" He took a step forward and uncoiled his ability, striking out at Anna. He caught her off guard, slipping past her defences before she could reinforce them, and locking into her mind as neatly as a key into a lock. Anna inhaled sharply and through the darkened lens of her shades, he could see her eyes fluttering rapidly against that first dawn of pain.

"Pain is felt all the way in your head," Smith said, conversationally as he mapped his way through her mind, gathering loops to yank on, to begin an attack. "I can make it so that your brain understands, and your body reacts. You  _think_ you're getting whipped, and so...your back gets the welts. Or you  _think_ you're being choked, and your throat _becomes_ crushed."

He could feel her pushing back at him, and she was extremely strong, but Smith didn't need strength at this point.  He was already where he wanted to be, and he  _twisted_. Anna swayed, and her resistance faded a great deal, but not before Smith felt her scrabbling in his own head.

" _Strafe_ ," she whispered and Smith released her go so abruptly that they both rocked back a little on their heels. She wasn't supposed to know that name. That was just for him and Charlie.

"He talked about you all the time, at the Academy," Anna said, and grimaced at the rough texture of her voice. Choking, Smith had focused on  _choking_ , and how he hated the ease in which he fell into the use of his ability. He despised the pleasurable rush of control, that gloating triumph of another person's mind buckling underneath his, so much so that their body began to manifest the symptoms of the attack. He had _promised_ himself he would never use it like this, yet here he was, attacking Authority personnel at his mother's funeral.

He turned away in disgust, mostly at himself, and began to walk off towards his father. "Leave us alone," he said. He couldn't bring himself to look over at where Charlie and Quentin stood.

Anna said, "If you worked for the Authority, you would have access to her," and Smith stopped walking. "She's still your sister. You do love her, I know....your mother would have wanted it that way."

Smith closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he was unsurprised to find himself staring into the assessing lightness of Charlie's eyes.

"I won't be a Hero," Smith finally answered as he broke their joined gaze, aware that this was an implicit yield... or the start of one at least. "I won't use it like that, not on normal people, criminals or whatever. I _won't_."

"Pity," she said, stepping around him to look up in his face with a wry smile. "A talent like that would be very useful on a Hero unit. But," she continued hurriedly as Smith felt his expression harden even more, "working for the Authority doesn't mean you have to be a Hero."

"Just as long as you can keep your eye on me, right?" Smith gave her a smile that was all teeth and not much else. "I see her any time I want."

He stalked away without waiting for her to respond to this single demand and headed towards his father, who was now by himself and leaning against the car as if he couldn't bear to support himself for much longer. However, Smith heard her soft voice when she said, "All right, Smith. Any time you want."

When Smith glanced over at the rest of the Authority agents, they were climbing into their cars, waiting for Anna to join them. Charlie glanced over his shoulder at Smith as he slipped inside, and offered a slow smile. In that moment there was a brief flicker of the boy Smith had known, and he smiled in return.

## iv. Strafe

  
Smith exited from the subway into rain and grinned at the curtains of pouring water. He walked down a few blocks, not quite running because the rain felt kind of nice after the hot stuffy press underground. Still, he was glad that Biggie's place was not too far away, and he was pretty soaked by the time he pushed through the grimy double doors into the dimly lit bar.  
   
"Jeez, Shephard," Biggie grumbled as Smith dripped his way to the bar. "Fuck, man, did you  _swim_  here, or what? Come on."  
   
"I got it," Leslie said, turning around on her stool. "Here, Smithy, let me dry you off."  
   
"No offence, Les," Smith said, a light grin touching his mouth, "but keep your crazy hands away from me."  
   
"Fine." Leslie turned back, blowing out the flames that gathered in her palms and picking up her drink again. The condensation that had gathered on the side of the bottle fizzled into steam and disappeared. "See if I care if you catch your death of cold."  
   
"Leslie, you're what, twenty-nine? Thirty?" Smith shrugged off his jacket and hung it over the back of the stool, taking his own seat. "You sound like my grandmother. Catch my death of cold, who says shit like that anymore?"  
   
Biggie set down a brown bottle of beer in front of him and Smith cradled it in both hands lovingly, before taking a long draught. "Yeah," he said in hoarse approval. "That's it right there."  
   
"Your grandma is more hip than I am, then," Leslie said with a snort, not knowing that Smith had never met any of his grandmothers. "There's no way she'd say anything like that, I bet." She took a sip from her bottle, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.  
   
"What's the story, morning glory," she finally asked, voice flat.  
   
Smith shrugged a few times, trying to work out that sore spot he had in his left shoulder. He could see their reflections in the polished glass in the back of the bar... whenever Biggie's hulking frame didn't obscure them, of course. Biggie was built in the same shape and about the same dimensions as a truck, so he had the tendency to obscure a lot, but Smith could still catch glimpses of his own head, his curls growing in again, and Leslie's blue faux-hawk. Smith wasn't quite sure if he liked her hairstyle or hated it, but he was willing to give it a chance.  
   
"Some fight involving Optiqal in a warehouse at the wharves--"  
   
"Great," Leslie muttered. "Laser-vision. Awesome."  
   
"And someone's apartment got trashed up on Bakers' Hill."  
   
"One apartment?" Leslie turned a hopeful gaze on him. "Just the one?"  
   
Smith took another sip and angled his head to give her a wide grin. "Just the one."  
   
"It's like, a light is shining down on me from the heavens," Leslie said with heartfelt reverence, directing her gaze upwards as if she could see mote-filled rays surrounding her on the stool. "I can hear the angels singing  _hallelujah_."  
   
"Don't rejoice yet," Smith warned. "Night's still young, you never know what might happen. But with nearly everybody fucking around in that extra-dimension shit, we might just catch a break, you know?"  
   
He drained the last of his beer as Leslie nodded, savouring the bitter-sweet taste. Then, he set the bottle down, got to his feet and turned around; he stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans in a very casual manner.  
   
"All right, EMR folks," he said loudly, making sure his voice carried over the low thump of the music. "Blue and Indigo, let's roll."  
   
There was a collective groan: people complained about how they needed to finish their drinks, how they wanted to watch the game on the large television. Smith ignored them cheerfully; his teams should have known from the moment he walked in that he'd be calling them out. As a matter of fact, they would have known from the alerts on their phones.  
   
That was the reason they were all here already, the lazy bastards.  
   
"Come on, come on." Smith urged them on the way a preschool teacher would coax their students to do some classwork. He walked past the tables to the wall that was opposite from the entrance, going to a section that protruded a few feet out. He pressed his thumb to a small, almost unnoticeable depression, and the decorative brickwork faded away to reveal a glass elevator. Smith stepped aside, and watched the crew shuffle in with mock-sullen mumbles.  
   
He was the last to step in, and he pressed the UP button, humming a quick little ditty. Leslie  gave him a pointed look, but Smith just hummed harder.   
   
The elevator carried the Blue and Indigo crews up two floors to their assigned locker-room and meeting area. For all intents and purposes, Biggie's bar simply took up the space that should have been the lobby of a featureless grey building; this building served the Extraordinary Municipal Repair Offices. Possibly, it was the EMR that occupied all the floors above Biggie's bar. One never knew, and could never tell. EMR crew were always in the bar in any case and Biggie, who was ex-EMR himself, never seemed to leave his post, so the need for constant security was low. Besides, Biggie had been shot before. The bullets had been stopped in his bulk like fruit bits suspended in gelatin.  
   
There were less robbery attempts after that. Less, as in _none_.

The elevator went past the levels for the Red and Orange, Yellow and Green. Purple level was reserved for management and observation, the latter of which had at least one individual on duty at all times, monitoring the television stations and the scanners; this individual would use their discretion to assign crew-leaders and crews to any given post-hero situation. Considering the tone of the text message ( _smith get your ass to the office. no rush no rush at all but theres a level four and two_ ), it was very likely that it was old Babcock up there.  
   
"Do we need any haz-mat shit, Smithy?" Elena asked as they trooped into their long, narrow meeting room, a tiny woman with brown eyes that seemed almost too large for her face. The door at the other end led to their changing-rooms and Elena stopped at her locker. She reached up.... and _up_ , for though her locker was one of the taller ones, her arms still stretched to pull the latch and open the door. She tugged her uniforms out, and peered at the thick yellow plastic of the hazardous materials suit.  
   
At his own locker, Smith considered her question, wrinkling his nose. "Nah," he finally said. "We can definitely do without them tonight."  
   
"Small mercies," Elena muttered, flicking her long black braids over one shoulder and lugging her uniform to one of the available cubicles. Smith located an empty one as well, pulling off his street wear and tugging the pair of dark-blue coveralls. He zipped up as he stepped out of the changing-cubicle, leaving his regular clothing hanging inside as they all did. No one would steal anything from their own team-mates; and there was no way that a strange person could just walk through Biggie's domain and access the work elevator just like that.  
   
He rolled his shoulders once, waiting for Blue and Indigo teams to gather around him. He had been in EMR for over ten years, since his college days, and with this particular team for about six. Elena and Leslie had been with him from nearly the start on Blue, and Victor had been transferred from Red a few months ago (Smith always got the 'difficult' crew; he found that they were not so difficult as they just needed a team-leader to listen to them more).

Ashley, a man who took name-related teasing with good humour, stood with the others of Indigo, the two newest members: a young man who called himself Wall and nothing else, and Haruka, a tall woman with lots of long, dark hair that she tended to pile atop her head. He smiled at them all, and they responded with grins or nods. They were his team, that was true, but they were also his friends. EMR folks had the tendency to establish closer and long-lasting relationships than Hero teams; Smith had seen the studies for that.

"Okay," he said, checking the message on his phone again. "Warehouse, then an apartment on the Hill. In and out, like easy money."

"Easy money," Haruka repeated with her ponderous accent, and then nodded just as heavily. She held out a hand to Smith, which he took before reaching out to grab Leslie's hand.

They stood in a circle, and Smith carefully let down his well-developed shields to allow Haruka to see where they would be going. He knew this city well enough and she didn't, so she used him or one of the others as a kind of locator. She nodded once more in her grave manner, and Smith braced himself against the pull of her transport.

Smith suspected that in a few months, Anna Chong would be sticking her nose into the EMR and attempting to transfer Haruka to a Hero team. Smith would fight it, of course, if Haruka didn't want that. From what he'd seen from Haruka these past few months, he doubted her gentle, retreating personality would handle it. The Authority had been changing their policies to include those not trained in their Academy on Hero units over the years; however, the Authority had less of a psychological hold over most of those people than they liked. Smith revelled in that fact.

The smooth floor of the locker room beneath his booted feet was replaced with the tarmac of a road; the still air was filled with a strong breeze which carried the brisk sting of salt-water. Haruka appeared apologetic as everyone took a large step away from the edge of the wharf. She had nearly landed them all right in the murky water; Smith's heels had actually been hanging off the edge of the worn planks.

"It's okay," Smith said, releasing his hold on his team-mates' hands. "We can swim, anyway."

" _I_ can't," Wall muttered and glowered at Haruka, who seemed to shrink back into herself. "You nearly got us killed."

"Chill," Smith told him, keeping his tone mild. "She didn't. And we'd have pulled each other anyway."

"Cause that's how we do," Elena agreed. Victor, Leslie and Ash nodded as well. Smith just stared Wall down until he shrugged and turned away.

"Ain't we supposed to be fixin' shit?" he asked sullenly. Smith barely himself prevented from pursing his lips in annoyance, and turned towards the row of buildings along the wharf. It was good that he couldn't see any damaged walls from outside, but that didn't mean that the interior of a building wasn't destroyed by the activities of a Hero and their nemesis...or even a petty criminal.

"There," Ashley said and pointed down the stretch of narrow road to where there were vehicles parked in front of one warehouse, their emergency lights flashing in the darkness.

Smith frowned a bit; this didn't look like one of the regular maintenance crews that sometimes waited on the EMR to do the heavy lifting and repair.

"That's an Authority ambulance," Ashley continued. Smith glanced at him, noting that he had already widened his eyes to take in the details of the scene from this distance. "Some Hero's hurt."

"Come on," Smith said and they set off in the direction of the ambulance. Upon approaching the ambulance, Smith could see the entry of the warehouse in front of which it had parked, and took in the mangled steel door. With a nod, he sent Ashley, Leslie and Elena to begin inspection and preliminary repairs. Smith had changed his major from pre-med to construction management in university, with a strong focus on structural engineering, much to his father's dismay. He liked it, though, and it had been a deliberate move to fit in with Anna's offer from the Authority. Leslie and Elena also had construction backgrounds, and Ashley's literal eye for detail was helpful in picking out damages that were undetectable to normal vision.

Smith went around to the back of the ambulance, trailed by Haruka, Victor and Wall. A man clad in a red Hero uniform was lying on the ground, breathing raggedly. Part of his face was burned very badly, and Smith bit the inside of his lip at the sight. Like most Heroes, Optiqal was a dick, but he did a fair job in protecting the planet. An Authority medical personnel was kneeling on the ground beside him, holding her hands over the damaged skin and frowning even as her gloved hands glowed.

"Well, well," yet another person said from behind these two on the ground and Smith closed his eyes briefly. "If it isn't the clean-up crew."

Smith pressed his lips together and hoped he wasn't glaring too hard when Celestial stepped out of the shadows and smirked at them. From behind him, he could hear Wall's admiring intake of breath. Admittedly, seeing a Hero this close was an awe-inspiring thing, especially Celestial. His skin was in its normal state, but Smith suspected that if he was in that ultra-mode where it was virtually impenetrable, Wall would have been even more impressed. The man was a Heroes Hero, the shining star of the Authority.

"Celestial," Smith said, keeping his greeting neutral. "What are you doing here?"

Celestial's narrow nose wrinkled and he seemed to dismiss Smith completely, his gaze taking in the other members of Smith's team with a cool disinterest.

"Back-up for Optiqal. You must be that locational-jumper," Celestial said to Haruka, and out of the corner of his eye, Smith saw her hesitant nod. "You shouldn't be wasting your time with the garbage collectors, darling. Why don't you do something more worthwhile?"

"I...don't understand what you are meaning," Haruka said, and glanced at Smith. He twitched his shoulders at her, and smiled at the same time, aiming for reassuring. Anna Chong always claimed that his smile was a devastating ability as well, for Haruka blinked rapidly and then smiled in return.

"What _I am meaning_ , sweetheart, is that you're running with the B-team," Celestial said, now leaning against the hood of the ambulance. He spared a momentary look for Optiqal and the EMT, and then folded his arms across his broad chest, smirking at Smith's small group. Smith heard Leslie yelling for him, but he wasn't backing down from this confrontation. He never did, and he wasn't about to start now.

Smith looked him up and down, letting his gaze trail slowly down the form-fitting uniform. Celestial shifted under the brush of his stare, the muscles in his long legs flexing.

"Careful, Cellie," Smith said in a low voice and grinned at the way Celestial glared at him. He hated that nickname, and Smith made it a personal mission to spread the use of it far and wide. "Remember that time EMR went on strike?"

Celestial's glare intensified and he straightened up from his careless lounge. Smith kept on grinning at him; of _course_ he remembered that time in a muggy summer three years ago, there were few who didn't. After over a week of arguing with Celestial at every turn, Smith had become fed up of all the taunting and somehow, managed to get all the EMR teams to stop working.

For an entire month. Up to this day, Anna was still pissed off with Smith over that. She couldn't figure out how Smith had managed to get Red/Orange and Yellow/Green leaders on his side, but she was looking at the situation with the eyes of a Hero. Heroes worked in units, on teams, that was true, but they were solitary creatures, caught up under the responsibility of their power and image. EMR was a pack.

Anna also didn't comprehend _why_ EMR went on strike, but Smith knew that Celestial wasn't the only Hero who was disdainful of EMR. The strike was his way of _proving_ to those dicks that without people like him, and Leslie and Victor, people willing to go in after the Heroes, the destruction would take far longer to fix with the regular maintenance team.

The mayor had called him one week before the strike had ended and demanded, "What is it that you want, Shephard?"

"A public apology from Celestial," Smith had said. He'd been cleaning out the litter box at the time, and making faces at Sugar, the cat.

"Fine," the mayor had snapped, and hung up.

"You're out of your mind," Celestial's voice had snarled out through the phone a few moments later. "Smith, you don't know what you're dealing with."

"That office building you and Acid Flux ran through last week," Smith said as he gripped the phone between his ear and shoulder, stir-fying some vegetables and ignoring Sugar's insistent twining around his legs, "it's still condemned, right? I mean, if you had Eli from Yellow on that, it'd be cleaned up in no time, you know?"

"What is your point?" Celestial growled out. "And it's not like _you_ can do anything special in the EMR, Smith, you're a psi."

"Right, because it's a waste to be a psi in the EMR." Smith sighed and moved the wok from off the heat. "I should be out on a Hero unit, yeah, yeah. I've heard this all before. My point is that Heroes need to recognize that while they're out there saving the world, we're here taking care of business. We don't need flak from the Hero units."

"Fine." Celestial had sounded as if he had ground that word between his teeth. "You're such an idealist, Smith. By the way, Acid Flux claims he doesn't want to be called that any more. Just Acid. Or Flux, I forget which one."

"Right, because I care about some villain's name. Goodbye, Cellie."

"Don't call me that, Smith!" Celestial sounded aggravated, but Smith hung up on him anyway. It was amazing how collected and calm Celestial was during a television interview in which he basically repeated what Smith had said: "EMR personnel are just as important as Hero units. I, the rest of my colleagues and the wider public should give them the respect that they deserve."

"The Authority trained you well, Charlie Chap," Smith had said with a salute to the screen, and went to call up the other leaders. It wasn't much, as far as apologies went, but Smith could take it. Since then, most of the other Heroes had backed off, but Smith knew that Celestial was a pretty persistent kind of guy.

Even as a kid, that had been one of his most endearing traits.

Now, Celestial gave him a look that, if he had abilities like Optiqal, Smith would have been a massive pile of steaming gunk, but he gave a wink in return.

"See you around, Cels," he said and spun on his heel, walking towards the damaged warehouse. Without hesitation, Haruka and Victor followed, but Smith heard Wall tell Celestial that he planned on applying to a Hero team soon.

"Good luck with that, kid," Celestial said with a mocking tinge to his voice, and only a faint whooshing sound indicated that he had taken off.

"Let me tell you about Heroes, Haruka!" Elena screeched over the noise of clean-up a few minutes later; her elongated arms were wrapped around two columns, holding them into place as Leslie carefully fused temporary lateral braces to them with a great output of heat from the tips of her fingers. "Cocky shits, that's what they are!"

"It takes a certain personality to be a Hero," Victor added, utilizing his telekinesis to shift large chunks of broken wall from one side to another. "It's like being a singer, versus being a performer. Some people can sing, but they can't charm a crowd, you know? Heroes charm crowds. You have folks in EMR that can stop asteroids too, but they just don't want to do that. So if they're helping, they do it other ways."

"I...wouldn't want to be a Hero," Haruka said, following Smith's instructions on displacing piles of rubble. Ashley was inspecting the connections Leslie created, while Wall rebuilt long stretches of partitions by touching an existing (and still standing) wall, then simply recreating freestanding structures by messing with the atomic structure of the surrounding debris. It was a pretty cool ability, admittedly, and Smith could see him working on a Hero team.

"I want to be on a Hero unit," Wall confirmed in a loud determined tone, as if he had heard Smith's thought. "They're the best of the best."

Smith said nothing, but exchanged amused glances with Elena.

"Best of the best?" Leslie yelled. "And they can't pick up after themselves? _Whatever_."

The warehouse took nearly all of the night, until it got a point where it was structurally secure again, and didn't pose a collapsing threat according to Smith's and Ashley's inspections. Smith decided that they wouldn't be doing the apartment; he'd ask Jamison, the leader of Red/Orange, to take it up for him in the morning. Jamie owed him one, anyway.

He dismissed the team after Haruka carried them back to the office and they changed into their street-gear, and then dragged himself upstairs to the Purple level to do his paperwork. Even though he didn't have the kind of abilities best suited for working on EMR, he still tried to do his part by organizing the workload and doing as much lifting as he could.

Babcock gave him a baleful stare as Smith walked past the glass-walled observation area which dominated a large chunk of the floor-space. A massive flat screen hung on one wall, divided into nine separate views of the city. The views changed with mind-numbing regularity, and Smith offered Babcock a cheerful wave.

Babcock leaned forward and pressed a button on his console. "Go fuck yourself, Shephard," he said, his voice a low rasp through the loudspeaker outside the secured door.

"You have a good night too, Babsie," Smith called out and Babcock wrinkled his hooked nose.

The paperwork didn't take very long, just a bit of writing as he sat at the desk in his narrow office, then a few quick blows of the stamp. Smith stood in his office, the self-inking stamp in one hand as he stared at a few framed magazine covers that had been mounted on his wall a few months after the EMR strike. Leslie had proudly brought them in one day, hanging them up while ignoring Smith's protests. Smith didn't like the focus on himself, but he had been grateful for the attention given to the EMR's hard work.

He carried the folder to the unoccupied front desk, intending to place it in the Outbox to be sent over to the Authority's main office. He hesitated, head bent in thought, then tucked it under his arm and walked towards the elevator.

Smith ambled through the bar, shaking his head when Biggie called out to him. Elena and Victor were at a booth in the corner, having a cup of coffee before going home, and Smith winked at them before he pushed his way outside. The rain in this section of the city had moved on; it was by the wharves, drizzling on the results of Blue/Indigo's efforts.

The Authority's building was located a few blocks away, a dark, squat structure that glowered in between two larger edifices. The Academy was a few hours away, set in the rolling countryside. Smith had seen pictures of it once, in Anna's office. She had spoken of it with the same pride a Navy Seal would utilize; the patch over her right eye had lent her a dashing, martial air.

It was barely dawn, but a security officer in the lobby eyed Smith's identification card with narrowed eyes, before looking up in his face as if making absolutely sure that the features matched.

"You must be new," Smith said as he took back his ID. "I haven't seen you before."

"No, Mr. Shephard," the guard said, grinning. "It's me, Carol." She blinked a few times, and the lines of her features blurred, softened, and then reshaped into a far more familiar arrangement. "Learnt that at a refining course at the Academy, couple days ago."

"Wow, that's really good," Smith said, clapping softly. "But the original is always the best. I thought I told you to call me Smith."

"Mr. _Shephard_ ," Carol said with a blush. "I mean, Smith. You can go ahead."

"See you around, Carol." Smith trotted to the floor above, to place his folder right on Anna's desk. Instead of returning to the lobby, he took the secure elevator to the fifth basement level, his ID giving him clearance to particular doors. After the sixth door, he began to feel Shanice pressing against his mind, the load increasing the closer he got.

"Good morning, Smith," the current watchers on duty greeted when he stepped inside the large room which contained his sister. The walls were thick, and lined with a reflective metal that was proven to effectively shield Shanice's power. The room itself had a flat landing, about three feet wide, which ran around the perimeter of the room. The floors sloped down from this landing, to another flat section on which Shanice's bed was located. The four watchers were at each upper corner of the room, concentrating all their energy on the woman lying on the bed. Her thick black hair curled over the pale pillowcases, and her eyes were open, staring blindly at the ceiling above.

"Hello, Shanice," Smith called out from where he stood at the door, looking down at his sister. The weight of her restrained ability shifted against his mind, a malignant cunning that made Smith swallow hard. There was a nurse down there with her at the moment, moving around the atrophied limbs. The nurse was sporting some contraption that rested on her shoulders and arched over her head: a large glass bubble with metallic spikes fixed in a regular swirling pattern. The previous nurse, a fairly competent psi, had not been wearing any kind of shield. He had committed suicide after a few days of taking care of Shanice.

"Everything okay, here?" Smith called out, balanced on a fine line between needing to leave and wanting to be brave enough to stay. He felt that if he even breathed the wrong way, he would fall.

"We're good, Smith," the watchers said in unison, joined as they were by mental blockade against Shanice. "Everything--" one continued.

"--is all right," another finished.

"Wait." A third watcher tilted his head and looked at Smith with a slyness he remembered from his childhood. " _Smiiiiiitth._ "

"Hello, Shan," Smith said, and noted that the other three watchers had bent their own heads even further, chins touching their chests, fighting to regain control. The nurse hurried up the narrow staircase which had been built into the slope facing the door; she gripped two of the spikes in an oddly delicate manner between the fingers and thumb of both hands, preventing her helmet from falling off.

"Later, Smith," she muttered as she fled.

"Smith," the watcher rasped out. "How I've missed my little brother. You don't write, you don't call." He tilted back his head and laughed for a long time, before he twitched and the raucous sound cut off abruptly.

"We're good," the watchers muttered together. "Everything--" one started.

"--is--"

"--under--"

"--control," the final one sighed out and they were still.

"Thank you," Smith told them, but he wasn't sure if any of them heard him. The miasma of Shanice's personality was muted down almost to nothing at all, and Smith stepped back from a silence that was almost as oppressive. He hadn't felt that tired after working at the warehouse, but now he felt utterly drained.

He didn't scuttle back to the elevator, but it was very close. Carol seemed concerned as he hurried past her, but he managed to soothe away any worries with a large grin thrown over his shoulder as he departed. It felt wrong on his face, but Carol seemed to accept it for what it was.

Sugar was yowling for him as soon as he stepped inside his apartment, angrily stalking him when he went to his bedroom first instead of feeding her.

"Relax," he told her as he stripped off his jeans and shirt, pulling on an old pair of basketball shorts. "Gimme a sec, relax."

Sugar made a sound that indicated that there was _no way_ she would relax, as long as her food bowl remained empty. Smith navigated his way through the darkness of his apartment, switching on the light. He reached for the bag of cat food and poured out some kibble.

"I hope you didn't break the latch for my window again," he said as he placed the bowl on the floor and stepped away from Sugar's famished rush. "It's why I gave you an actual key."

A low groan emanated from the location of the sofa that faced the single large window in the living and dining area, an odd arrangement that Smith liked for some reason; the other chairs faced each other and the television. Celestial had been lying down, and he rose slowly, shambling over to stand in the kitchen proper, scratching at his belly and yawning. In a pair of dark sweatpants and a simple yellow t-shirt, he looked far more slender than he did in his Hero uniform; younger, too.

He reached out and pressed his long fingers to Smith's wrist, moving his thumb in slow circles. His touch was cold against Smith's skin.

Smith said, "I'm not in the fucking mood right now, Charlie."

Charlie sighed, as if he felt that Smith was being completely unfair. Smith gave him an annoyed glare and tried to tug away, and Charlie let him.

Smith just couldn't be whatever Charlie wanted him to be today. Smith was the only one who could cause Charlie genuine pain; he could reach past Charlie's invulnerability, stroking along his mind with grim precision while Charlie arched underneath him, and throbbed inside him. They both knew that Smith liked doing that, no matter that he claimed otherwise, stretching out his under-utilized ability and striking out at someone who _wanted_ it.

 _Needed_ it. Quentin declared that they were absolutely perfect for each other. Smith told him where he could stick his psychological meanderings, and Quentin had laughed until he gasped for air.

Now, Charlie grabbed him by the wrist again, and tugged him towards the bedroom. They passed a neat pile of comic books taking up pride of place on a shelf near the television.

"When I was in the Academy, I dreamed we would be partners, just like in the comics." Charlie led him towards his own bed, pushing Smith down on the bed and stripping off his own clothing. He was lean, pale perfection and Smith wanted him very badly...just, not right now. "I woke up nearly every day thinking that you'd soon be there, and we'd be Strafe and Stellar forever. Just like when we were kids."

"We aren't kids anymore," Smith muttered as he curled into bed, and Charlie curled in behind him, sliding his arms around Smith; he remained tense for a few shallow breaths, and then began to relax against Charlie's longer frame. He felt the warm bulge of Charlie's cock nestled against the curve of his buttocks, but it wasn't hardening in arousal. Not yet; maybe tonight, when they woke again.

"We aren't kids anymore," Smith repeated, sleep blurring his words. "I wish we were."

"I know," Charlie breathed against his neck. "I know."

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts! You can leave them here, [at the novel_bigbang post](http://community.livejournal.com/novel_bigbang/14213.html?mode=reply) (or at my [original fic LJ](http://community.livejournal.com/pendumonium/3859.html?mode=reply)).


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